Prologue. Time, the early 1930s; place, Manhattan. A series of vignettes depicts the childhood successes of a little blonde from Brooklyn, Belle ("Bubbles") Silverman. At three, she sings and tap-dances on the Saturday morning children's radio program, Uncle Bob's Rainbow House. At seven, she joins the Major Bowes' Capital Family Hour. At eleven, she does 36 weeks as a singing mountain girl on the radio serial Our Gal Sunday, and performs one of radio's first singing commercials, "Rinso White, Rinso White, happy little washday song."
Act I. Time, 1953; place, apartment on Manhattan's Riverside Drive, which Bubbles, now 24 and...