I'll See You in My Dreams

Working class aspiring poet Gus Kahn walks into Wm Rossiter & Sons Music Publishers in his hometown of Chicago to get advice on whether his poems show any promise of being good song lyrics. Despite not particularly liking him on first meeting, Grace Le Boy, who works as a music demonstrator at the publishing house, decides to help him since although his current poems are not song material, she can see that he is a good writer. For a subsequent poem of his, Grace decides to put it to music, the resulting song which does become a hit. Their subsequent professional collaborations over several years yield no such follow-up hit, but Grace comes to the conclusion that her music is the problem and not his lyrics. So Grace encourages him to collaborate with other composers. She has no qualms in suggesting these other collaborations as her goal is not to be a world class composer but to become Grace Kahn, despite Gus not ever having shown any real interest in her or anyone romantically. Her wish does become reality as Gus had always loved her but just did not show it. Gus has song success after success with a variety of composers, with Grace always being the one to encourage him to pursue opportunities or to pursue those opportunities for him whether he liked it or not. But an often antagonist partnership with composer Walter Donaldson, Gus moving to New York without Grace to work for Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. and Gus' association with Follies star Gloria Knight, the stock market crash and the Great Depression, changing musical tastes over time, and the perception by many that Grace wears the pants in the family threaten both Gus' professional life and his marriage to Grace.