The life of Hans Christian Andersen. The son of a poor cobbler, he becomes Denmark’s national poet. The film reveals the strange childhood from which he derived the whimsy and fantasy of his fairy tales. As a boy of fourteen, he went to Copenhagen, bent on achieving fame in one way or another. He failed to impress the theatrical producers but obtained a scholarship from the King of Denmark. Soon he was writing short stories, plays, poems, novels and fairy tales.