[1][2][3] Screenwriter Rodolfo Sonego was inspired for the plot by the participation of one of his friends, the painter Salvatore Scarpitta, to the NBC program This Is Your Life.

[4] Giuseppe Marossi (Alberto Sordi), working in a Gulf gas station in Viterbo, Italy, receives a visit from an American television producer inviting him to New York to film his reunion with his long-lost father Lando Marossi (Vittorio De Sica) on a show based on This is Your Life.

Lando had abandoned the family when Giuseppe was a child, and was assumed dead; in fact, he emigrated to America and became a wealthy businessman.

It is, however, across the street from a general store and gas station, which are managed by Lando's wife's sister (played by the amateur actress and Memphis belle Alice Conden).

The two young people fall in love, and Giuseppe ends the film pumping gas at another Gulf station, but near the shore of the Mississippi River, with an American woman at his side.