Synopsis: Blue Velvet

In 1940, America is not yet at war, but nineteen-year-old Celeste Riley is at war with herself as she ponders the direction the rest of her life should take. Motherless since the age of five, she lives with an abusive, alcoholic father. She has managed to put herself through two years of junior college and find a steady job as an assistant bookkeeper at Woolworth.
Window shopping on her lunch hour one day, she sees a blue velvet dress and impulsively puts it on layaway. The night she finally brings it home, she sneaks out to a dance at a local hotel. There she meets Nick Duncan, a traveling salesman in town for the night. They dance and talk, and Celeste falls a little bit in love.
Nick tells her that his route will bring him back to town in two weeks, but when she goes to the dance, she finds only an envelope addressed to “the girl in the blue velvet dress”. Nick’s route has changed, and he won’t be coming back.
When war comes a year later, Celeste volunteers in the local canteen established for the soldiers at the new bombardier training school. One night, Nick walks in. He tells her that because he was supporting his widowed mother and younger brother, he felt that he couldn’t “court” her. Now things have changed.
They spend every spare moment together, and before Nick goes home on leave prior to being sent overseas, he asks Celeste to marry him. Later, after Nick has gone, his mother Dorothy writes to invite Celeste for a visit. Her father has become more abusive after learning that his daughter is involved with a soldier. Encouraged by her married older sister and helped by her boss who arranges a transfer to the Woolworth in Nick’s hometown, Celeste flees.
Nick’s family invites her to live with them, work part-time, and return to college. She also meets his former girlfriend, Ginger Avery, who says that her eight-year-old son is Nick’s child. On the heels of this revelation comes the news that Nick is missing in action and presumed killed.
Two long years pass, and when the war is over in Europe, word comes that Nick has been found alive in a prison camp. Celeste rushes to the hospital in Washington when he is transferred home and learns that he has had both legs amputated. He tells her to get on with her life, but Celeste knows what she wants and is determined to convince Nick that he wants the same thing.