When a young couple move into the attic apartment of an older college professor, they are able to dissuade him from suicide and reinvest him in life.

Jason (William Holden) is a World War II veteran going to college on the GI Bill in the hope of bettering himself. He has recently married his sweetheart, Peggy (Jeanne Crain), who has learned that they're having a baby. However, money is tight for the young couple, and inexpensive housing is at a premium in the post-war boom times. Peggy meets Professor Henry Barnes (Edmund Gwenn), an instructor at the college who lives alone in a huge house. Barnes is convinced that the best years of his life are over, that he has no purpose in life, and that our culture has sacrificed its highest ideals. But Peggy convinces Prof. Barnes to let her and Jason stay in his attic. As the newlyweds try to turn the cobwebbed space into a home, the professor gets to know his tenants better, and their enthusiastic optimism rubs off on him, giving him a sense that there are things left to be accomplished and reasons to go on. APARTMENT FOR PEGGY reunited director George Seaton with actor Edmund Gwenn, who had clicked the previous year in the classic MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET.