Let me tell you something, son. When youre young, and you head out to wonderful, everything is fresh and bright as a brand-new penny, but before you get to wonderful youre going to have to pass through all right. And when you get to all right, stop and take a good, long look, because that may be as far as youre ever going to go.

It is the summer of 1948 when a handsome, charismatic stranger, Charlie Beale, recently back from the war in Europe,