While away on business, Harry Graham (Edmond O'Brien) hops a Hollywood tour bus. Sitting next to him is a tough-talking waitress, Phyllis Martin (Ida Lupino). He lights her cigarette and, a few more trips to Los Angeles later, Harry and Phyllis are wed. Back home in San Francisco, he and his wife, Eve (Joan Fontaine), are trying to adopt a child. Harry noticeably hesitates before signing a release granting the adoption agency permission to investigate their lives. The head of the agency, Mr. Jordan, senses that there is something amiss and decides to dig deeper Harry is torn by his love and his desire to protect both women. Eve, though aloof, gives him a decent life. Phyllis, hardened by past disappointments, needs his love. Harry's situation becomes desperate as he tries to maintain his double life under the weight of Mr. Jordan's endless probing.
Tough but sensitive Edmond O'Brien appeared in such film noir classics as The Killer (1946), D.O.A. (1949), White Heat (1949), The Hitchhiker (1953), A Cry In The Night (1956) and many others. Filmmaker/actress (and sometimes writer and producer) Ida Lupino became famous after her appearance in High Sierra (1941). She was the most renowned female director of her time with a series of films that frequently explored subjects considered socially taboo. Joan Fontaine is fondly remembered for her Academy Award winning performance in Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941).