Clarence Brown, director of the Metro Goldwyn Mayer 1943 motion picture introduces this radio version, which has Mickey Rooney reprising his original film role as teenager Homer MaCauley from Ithaca who who begins work in the telegraph office to help his mother after his father passed away and his elder brother was away at war. 

Clarence Brown was fascinated by the title that the the author William Saroyan gave his story. He rather thinks he has called it a comedy to accentuate the fact that it comes within a hair of being tragic. In that margin of difference lies the breadth of our human genius for finding happiness in a universe that can be both cruel and sweet.