Bambi

Francesca Parkhurst, called Bambi, keeps house for her absent-minded professor father and decides to marry Jarvis Jocelyn, a penniless young playwright whom no manager will produce. Then she sets about making him famous without his noticing, while quietly making a name of her own as a writer of the stories the magazines want. Marjorie Benton Cooke wrote comedies about capable women, and Bambi, with her managing ways and her soft heart, is the most capable of them. Fifty-eight plates of American painting, from Childe Hassam's flag-lined streets to George Bellows's dockside men, catch the same turn-of-the-century bustle and humor that runs through Bambi's own story.