Ruth Gordon's warm, semi-autobiographical comedy follows Paula Wharton, a successful Hollywood screenwriter whose husband Max enlists in the Army during wartime and is sent to an officer training camp, prompting Paula to rent a shabby cottage nearby so she can stay close to him despite the discomforts of camp-town life so far removed from her glamorous career. As Max struggles through the physical and academic rigors of officer candidate school, worried he may wash out, Paula finds herself entangled in the lives of neighboring military families, including another couple, Jan and Roy Lupton, navigating similar strains, and fending off a visiting Hollywood colleague eager to lure her back to easier, more lucrative work. Gordon based the material on her own experience during her husband Garson Kanin's wartime service, giving the comedy an affectionate, lived-in authenticity beneath its brisk one-liners and culture-clash humor between Hollywood sophistication and Army spartanism. The play balances comic set pieces about camp bureaucracy and small-town gossip with a sincere undercurrent about sacrifice, loyalty, and growing up that the title's phrase, suggesting adult maturity finally achieved "over twenty-one," makes explicit. Its blend of wartime topicality and personal warmth made it a Broadway hit and a popular choice for community theaters in the years following the war.

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