H.M. Pulham, Esq.

H.M. Pulham, Esq. is a 1941 film, directed by King Vidor and based on a novel by John P. Marquand. Vidor co-wrote the screenplay with his wife, Elizabeth Hill Vidor. The movie starred Robert Young in the title role, with Hedy Lamarr, Ruth Hussey, Charles Coburn, and Van Heflin. There is also an early uncredited appearance by Ava Gardner. Harry Moulton Pulham Jr. is a conservative, middle-aged Boston businessman, set in a precise daily routine. He has a proper wife, Kay , with whom he has settled into a comfortable if passionless relationship. However, it was not always that way. When Harry... is saddled with the task of organizing a twenty-five-year college reunion, it triggers a flashback to a time more than twenty years earlier. After the end of World War I, his Harvard classmate and friend Bill King gets him a job in a New York City advertising company, where he falls in love with a vivacious, independent coworker oddly named Marvin Miles . However, though they love each other, she cannot bring herself to fit into his traditional idea of a wife's role and he cannot imagine living anywhere other than hidebound Boston.
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