There was dancing in the street and tea on the river front when the Jacaranda Festival sprung to life in the last week of October in 1949. The Jacaranda Queen was the "most popular and prettiest girl in town" and the whole of the Clarence Valley descended on Grafton for the festival.
Noriko is perfectly happy living at home with her widowed father, Shukichi, and has no plans to marry -- that is, until her aunt Masa convinces Shukichi that unless he marries off his 27-year-old daughter soon, she will likely remain alone for the rest of her life.
Young Viscount Tony Pym wangles National Service leave on the pretext of standing as a Tory candidate for a local seat held by his family for generations.
A bizarre mechanic tells a traveler the story of a bank employee, Peppino Biancaneve, who with the help of a disc is trying to put together the words he would like to use to ask for the hand of the daughter of the jeweler Carlo Casertoni, but while he mulls over the sentences he should pronounce to his future father-in-law he comes across a strange individual who could be a bringer of bad luck: a jettatore.
Familiar radio voice Ben Grauer leads the viewer on a behind the scenes tour of the National Broadcasting Company studios -- both radio and television -- in Rockefeller Center and Hollywood.