After a round of partying he can't remember, World War II veteran Dave Hirsh is placed on a bus headed for the last place he'd choose: Parkman, Indiana, the hometown Hirsh hasn't seen in well over decade. Frank Sinatra plays Hirsh, whose arrival in Parkman brings small-town hypocrisy to the unforgiving light of day in this character-driven tale directed by Vincente Minnelli and based on a novel by James Jones (whose From Here to Eternity led to Sinatra's 1953 Oscar *). In his first screen pairing with Sinatra, Dean Martin plays a sharp-witted card sharp. And Shirley MacLaine earned one of the movie's five Academy Award nominations as the good-hearted floozy with a potentially fatal attraction to Hirsh.