An alcoholic ex-football player drinks his days away, having failed to come to terms with his sexuality and his real feelings for his football buddy who died after an ambiguous accident. His wife is crucified by her desperation to make him desire her: but he resists the affections of his wife. His reunion with his father—who is dying of cancer—jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.

Living in Kentucky prior to the Civil War, Amantha Starr is a privileged young woman. Her widowed father, a wealthy plantation owner, dotes on her and sends her to the best schools. When he dies suddenly Amantha's world is turned upside down. She learns that her father had been living on borrowed money and that her mother was actually a slave and her father's mistress.

Blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (working under the pseudonym “Sally Stubblefield”) tells a rough-edged tale of life inside a 1950s women’s reformatory. Set in the Martha Washington School for Girls—an institute for wayward teenagers and unwed mothers—THE GREEN-EYED BLONDE tackles a range of topical social issues as the inmates band together to help out one of their own when she refuses to give up her child.