 While working as a counselor at a summer camp, college-student Marjorie Morgenstern falls for 32-year-old Noel Airman, a would-be dramatist working at a nearby summer theater. Like Marjorie, he is an upper-middle-class New York Jew (born  Ehrman ), but has fallen away from his roots, and Marjorie s parents object among other things to his lack of a suitable profession, such as medicine or law. Noel himself warns Marjorie repeatedly that she s much too naive and conventional for him, but they nonetheless fall in love. As they pursue an on-again-off-again relationship, Marjorie completes her studies at Hunter College, and works to establish an acting career, while Noel first leaves the theater for a job with an advertising agency, but later completes a musical he d started writing before he and Marjorie had first met. Meanwhile, their relationship deepens (though, consistent with  50s Hollywood mores, the more full-fledged sexuality in their relationship is never explicitly communicated). They plan to marry, but after the musical s critical failure on Broadway, Noel runs away. Marjorie finally tracks him down at the summer theater where they first met--and, realizing that this is probably where he belongs, finally gives up on the relationship. Helping her to move on with her life is Wally, once Noel s assistant, now a very successful Broadway playwright, and all along, Marjorie s unrequited lover. The movie ends with a clear implication Wally and Marjorie will finally be a couple.