In the Great Depression, Dove Linkhorn, Laurence Harvey and Kitty Tristram, Jane Fonda, meet on the road in Texas as each travels toward New Orleans. They decide to travel together, hitchhiking and hopping freight trains, with Dove secretly hoping to find his lost love Hallie Gerard, Capucine. He is not receptive when Kitty makes a pass at him, preferring his own quest over romance at that moment.
After a tense moment of temptation, the pair stops at a New Orleans-area cafe where Kitty physcially slips away with something that doesn’t belong to her. Dove, dismayed, leaves Kitty to face the consequences and makes amends with the cafe’s owner, Teresina Vidaverri, Anne Baxter. Teresina offers Dove a job at the café and a safe place to stay while he continues his search for Hallie. The arrangement becomes a turning point: Dove finds Hallie not in Texas or on a street corner, but working at the Doll House, a refined bordello in the French Quarter, where Jo Courtney, Barbara Stanwyck, runs the operation as madam.
As the story unfolds, it is revealed that Jo’s husband—whose legs were lost in an accident—left Jo feeling emotionally estranged from him. In the shadows of the bordello, a relationship between Jo and Hallie is suggested, with Hallie pursuing her own art—sculpting—despite her consistent role as a sex worker. Jo supports Hallie's artistic ambitions while keeping her within the confines of the life she leads at the bordello. Hallie, though not entirely content, finds a fragile security in the comforts Jo provides, even as Dove’s marriage proposal stirs hopes of a future outside that life.
Meanwhile, Kitty begins working at the bordello after Jo bails her out of jail, a turn of events that ties her more closely to the circle Dove has entered. Because it appears that Kitty and Dove share a past, Jo presses Kitty for details about their journey from Texas to Louisiana. This interrogation triggers a threat: Jo accuses Dove of transporting the underage Kitty across state lines for immoral purposes and even accuses him of statutory rape unless he departs New Orleans without Hallie.
As Dove tries to leave, the tension explodes. The bouncer, the bartender, and Jo’s husband beat Dove in a brutal confrontation, while Kitty watches from upstairs, a witness to the violence that has become all too common in this underworld. Kitty’s loyalty shifts again when she chooses to help Dove return to the cafe, where Teresina nurses him back to health and clarity.
But the drama intensifies: Kitty returns to the bordello to retrieve Hallie, hoping to escort her to safety at the cafe. Hallie, however, cannot be found at the bordello, and Kitty is placed under pressure and suspicion. Fearful and pressed to betray someone she’s come to care about, Kitty leads Jo and her three henchmen back to the cafe. What follows is chaos and a desperate struggle that ends with Hallie being hit by a stray bullet and dying.
In the aftermath, the front page of the newspapers bears testimony to Kitty’s claims, and Jo, along with several others, is convicted. The film closes on a note that mixes sorrow and justice, underscoring the perilous choices made by people trying to survive in a world that offers little mercy and even less straightforward salvation.
