Dear Heart

Plot synopsis:
Evie Jackson (Geraldine Page) is a middle-aged, single postmaster from Ohio who is attending a postmasters' convention at a New York City hotel. Outgoing, honest, and somewhat tactless, she has many friends but pines for a romantic relationship, one that will be more meaningful than the flings she has had with married conventioneers in previous years. She uses various means to make herself feel less lonely and more important, such as sending herself a welcome message and having herself paged in the hotel lobby.
Harry Mork (Glenn Ford) is a womanizing former traveling salesman for a greeting card company, who now wishes to settle down. Harry has accepted a promotion to an office job in New York City, and has gotten engaged to Phyllis (Angela Lansbury), a middle-aged widowed housewife from Altoona, Pennsylvania. Harry is staying alone in the same hotel as Evie while he starts his new job and finds an apartment, where Phyllis, who is still back in Altoona, will later join him. While Harry is checking in, Phyllis's son Patrick (Michael Anderson, Jr.) suddenly arrives, seeking to bond with his new father. Harry is surprised to find that Patrick is not the young boy he had expected based on a photograph, but instead is an 18-year-old bohemian with a beard (which, it is later revealed, got him expelled from school). Harry is mildly annoyed by Patrick's unexpected arrival and embarrassed by his casual attitude towards women, sex and nudity, particularly after Patrick moves into Harry's hotel room with his purportedly platonic female friend, Émile Zola Bernkrand (Joanna Crawford).
Evie meets Harry when they are forced to share a dinner table in the crowded hotel restaurant, but Harry is more interested in buxom blonde hotel shop clerk June Loveland (Barbara Nichols) than he is in the overly friendly Evie, and quickly makes an excuse to leave for a tryst with June. Returning to the hotel, Harry meets Evie again in the lobby, where she is upset after escaping from the unwanted sexual advances of a strange man outside her room. Evie and Harry end up enjoying each other's company over drinks in the courtyard of an Italian restaurant, and make a date for the next morning. However, the next morning Patrick shows up again wanting to spend the day with Harry, so Harry breaks his date with Evie to go look at apartments with Patrick and Zola. A disappointed Evie spends the day with a trio of older spinster postmasters, but cheers up when Harry returns, offering to take her to dinner and show her the apartment he rented in Greenwich Village.
Evie optimistically thinks Harry is planning to reveal that the apartment is intended for the two of them to occupy, and is crushed when she realizes that Harry is really planning to live there with his soon-to-be wife, Phyllis. Harry takes Evie back to the hotel and impulsively kisses her, but Phyllis unexpectedly arrives from Altoona. So Harry goes to stay with her in the hotel across the street, while Evie sadly arranges to return to Ohio the next day. But Harry soon discovers that Phyllis does not want to live a happy domestic life with him in the old-fashioned apartment he rented. Instead she wants to live in modern hotels with room service, where she won't have to cook or clean, and to sleep in separate beds. She also wants Harry to be a father figure to Patrick so she won't have to deal with him and his teenage problems. Harry realizes that he truly loves Evie, and that Patrick and Phyllis need to spend more time with each other rather than with him. He breaks off his engagement and happily reunites with Evie at the busy train station just before she would have returned home.

Tags: romantic

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