Bronx-born David Kokolovitz, yearning to become a matinee idol in the tradition of Ronald Colman, has a family, a girlfriend and friend at the Foreman Sewing Machine Works. In 1940, at age eighteen, he says good-bye to all that and heads for the Deep South, where opportunity knocks in the form of the Avon Shakespearean Repertory Company. Transforming himself into Don Coleman, David discovers the hazards of too-tight tights and too-long soliloquies, of new romance and the unnerving realization that he's a Jew who's been invited to dinner at Tara. World War II interrupts David's Shakespearean experience, but not his theatrical or romantic basic training, as he enlists to serve his country by entertaining the troops. When the soldiers cheer his antics in Hawaii and Iwo Jima, David comes to the exhilarating realization that his gift for making people laugh has placed him in the spotlight of his dreams.