The film had a confusing title - often thought of as the chemical symbol for water.With a production budget of approximately $17 million, and box-office gross revenues of $55 million (domestic) and $73 million (worldwide).Each of the flashbacks is an idealized construct of her.[Whether the real Laura measures up to his adoring memories is open to question.] He begins with their dining together "the night before her twenty-second birthday.Just we two, happy, making plans for her future." But first, he recalls, from his point of view, when Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney) was still a young aspiring career woman five years earlier when she first approached him in the Algonquin Hotel dining room where he was having lunch.Presumably, he suffered from polio but maybe Guillain–Barré syndrome.Frequent visits led to the locale being dubbed FDR""s "Little White House."]During a dinner of freshly-caught trout later that evening, Ellen announced that her mother didn""t care for New Mexico (even though it was her first visit).When she""s not looking, they place a frog in her pocket.At the dinner table that evening in the formal dining room, Maria is again victimized by another of the childrens"" antics - she sits on a rough-edged pine cone placed on her chair."Kent: "Shake hands with his Aunt Emma....(after a few moments) Frankenstein - swell idea for a unit."Problems and challenges were piling up for Kent:the continual demand to creatively invent new ideas for ""units""the coordination and support of a nationwide network of prologue ""units""a number of personnel and morale issues amongst he casts and rehearsal directorsnepotistic pressures from Gould""s wife to show favoritism and hire (and not fire) her acquaintances without regard to meritan unknown spy in Kent""s organization who was plagiarizing his dance ""unit"" ideas and providing them to the competition (Gladstone)the violation of censorship rules that kept limiting he subject matter of the ""prologues""the selection of music for the different showsthe possibility that Kent""s profits and hard work were being siphoned and skimmed off by his backersConniving Females: Gracie with Harry, and Vivian with Kent:When Nan returned to her apartment later that night, she encountered her rapacious friend Vivian Rich (Claire Dodd) - a previously low-class, down-and-out, facetious, aspiring young female actress and acquaintance who had failed in Hollywood and moved back in - without permission:Vivian: "I knew you wouldn""t mind putting me up for a day or two.