Summary
A cerebral prodigy, Anthony Osgood, toils amid the sterile gleam of his laboratory while his fiancée, Persis Meade, drifts into a paper-thin romance with an absent war idol whose letters arrive via Red Cross envelopes. Enter Lorenzo Pascal, a card-sharp drifter who chances upon the hero’s suitcase and, like a fallen angel wearing borrowed plumage, materializes at Persis’s gabled doorstep to inhabit the legend she has already half-written in her imagination. One telephone call—its cord coiling like a serpent—delivers the blow: Anthony hears Persis laugh in another man’s embrace, and the word “pep” slices through the wire, branding him inadequate. Reeling, he seeks out Jeanette Adair, a jazz-age priestess whose every shimmy promises resurrection. Under her strobing chandeliers, Anthony’s veins are rewired; reticent neurons morph into syncopated swagger. Yet every metamorphosis demands its pound of flesh: Persis, having unmasked the counterfeit hero, scurries back—only to find the laboratory door locked, the scientist’s heart now incubating in Jeanette’s phosphorescent orbit.
Synopsis
Young scientist Anthony Osgood is engaged to Persis Meade, who has postponed their marriage several times after becoming interested in an overseas hero through Red Cross correspondence. Meanwhile, gambler Lorenzo Pascal stumbles upon the hero's suitcase and goes to Persis' home impersonating him. When Anthony calls and finds his fiancée in another man's arms, Persis explains that he lacks pep. This sends him to dancer Jeanette Adair for help in making him over. Under Jeanette's tutelage, Anthony embarks upon a career of jazz parties and succeeds in changing his image. Discovering that her hero is a fraud, Persis tries to go back to Anthony but she is too late, for he has fallen in love with Jeanette.
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