Plot After seven years at college, friendly but dim-witted Thomas R. "Tommy" Callahan III barely graduates from Marquette University and returns to his hometown of Sandusky, Ohio. His father, widowed industrialist Thomas R. "Big Tom" Callahan Jr., gives him an executive job at the family's auto parts plant, Callahan Auto, and reveals he will marry Beverly Barrish-Burns, whom he had met at a fat farm, with her son Paul effectively becoming Tommy's new stepbrother. However, Big Tom suddenly suffers a fatal heart attack during the wedding reception. After the funeral, doubting the company will survive without Big Tom, the bank reneges on promises of a loan for a new brake pad division, requiring that the company's debts be resolved immediately. Tommy suggests that he will let the bank hold his few inherited shares and house in exchange for the bank giving time to sell 500,000 brake pads to prove the new division's viability; if he succeeds, the bank will underwrite the venture. Tommy then sets out on a cross-country sales trip with Big Tom's sardonic and sycophantic assistant Richard Hayden, a childhood acquaintance who is particularly antagonistic towards Tommy.
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