You're a very fine swan indeed!

I took the time to borrow musicals off of my brother a few weeks ago and watch this film.
The song 'The Ugly Duckling' was used in a car advert a few years and it really annoyed me that I didn't know the original and most importantly that I didn't know all the words!
So.... I decided to go and watch the musical that it came from- 'Hans Christian Andersen'. Perhaps some of you are like me and recognise the name from somewhere. Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish Poet and Author, famous for writing most of the stories that are well known, such as Thumbelina.
Danny Kaye stars as Hans Christian Andersen, the cobbler who gets in trouble for telling all the children in his village stories when they should be in school. In the end, the school master gets so fed up with him that he refuses to carry on teaching untill Hans has left the village. Hans is encouraged to leave by his apprentice Peter and he goes to Copenhagen. He is immediately arrested for defiling the kings statue or something to that effect. There he meets a girl that is on the other side of his prison bars and he tells her the story of Thumbelina.

He is hired and taken out of prison to make shoes for the ballet... no need to say that he basically falls in love with the ballerina who is married to the director and choreographer. Hans makes her shoes and writes her a story about the little mermaid. The ballet then depart, as ballets do and Hans is left to return to being a cobbler and telling stories.
At the end of one story, he notices that all the other children are knocking the hat off one child and he tells this child a story about an ugly duckling!
Hans isn't aware that the boys father is a publisher for the newspaper and he publishes Hans' stories. Then of course the ballet return and they are using Hans' story of the little mermaid.
In the end, he returns back to copenhagen and carries on telling stories- this time with an audience because he is now Hans Christian Andersen the writer instead of just Hans the Cobbler.
Alls well that ends well!