TV icons Marlo Thomas and Alan Alda star in this romance set against the threat of the Vietnam War. Thomas plays Jenny, a shy, moony girl from Connecticut who has come to New York City after she gets pregnant. Alda plays a callow young filmmaker named Delano (after FDR) who makes TV commercials. They meet in Central Park when she wanders into his shot as he filming a bag lady (Charlotte Rae).
It seems she got pregnant at a drive-in, carried away by the romantic story of A PLACE IN THE SUN. He has a girlfriend Kay (Marian Hailey) and is afraid of being drafted and sent to war. As the draft threat looms, he learns that married men with children are being exempted so he strikes a deal with lonely Jenny to get married. She saves him from the draft; he takes care of her and her baby. While this all starts out as a practical arrangement, what are the odds against its turning into real love?
Jenny is too entrenched in her dreams of romance to understand the grim reality of being an unwed mother. Delano is too selfish to really care much about Jenny or even his current girlfriend. It all gets complicated by Jenny's lies to her parents (Vincent Gardenia, Elizabeth Wilson) about who Delano really is.
While Gardenia and Wilson come off well as the slightly daffy parents, and Hailey is quite good as the understanding Kay, the characters of Jenny and Delano are not terribly sympathetic. Alda and Thomas can't seem to add enough warmth to make these characters likable. Minor characters like Rae's bag lady and a lonely man (Phil Bruns) Jenny meets spark more interest than the central characters.
JENNY is very much a film of its time. The Vietnam War dominated life for young people of that era. And while they are not radicals in any sense of the word, Delano and Jenny are caught in the war's long web. Even their eventual marriage takes place under a bleak picture of Richard Nixon on the wall.
