Prelude to Fame is a 1950 British drama film directed by Fergus McDonell from a story by Aldous Huxley. While vacationing in Italy, Nick Morell (Robin Dowell), son of John Morell (Guy Rolfe), a famous English philosopher and amateur musician and his wife Catherine (Kathleen Ryan), becomes friendly with young Guido (Jeremy Spenser), and Morell discovers the boy has an extraordinary instinct for orchestration and a phenomenal music memory. A neighboring couple, Signor and Signora Boudini (Henry Oscar and Kathleen Byron) become aware of the boy's talents, and she appeals to his parents to let her educate him musically. Torn by their love for their son and, they feel,the duty to let the world hear his talent, they consent.
A young woman leaves her backwards hometown to go to London to find a runaway suitor. What she doesn't know is that she has inherited a strange ability; if she's in the vicinity of a machine for more than fifteen minutes, it stops working.
Four war-time performers known for their concert parties, have a reunion. They decide they are still good together and form a successful nightclub act.
In Ballyconnen, Emmy Baudine (Siobhan McKenna) is a beautiful but disturbed young woman who works for the local priest. When the carnival comes to town, she encounters a handsome young boxer called Dan (Maxwell Reed) and lays his face open with her fingernails when he expects sexual favours from her. Hurriedly packed off by Father Corcoran (Liam Redmond) to Yorkshire, Emmy is taken in by a farming family and manages to suppress the strange feelings of fascination and repulsion that she experiences in the presence of the opposite sex. Until, that is, the carnival comes to town and brings with it the vengeful Dan...
