In California covering a golf tournament, New York sports reporter Mike Hagen (Gregory Peck) correctly chooses the winning golfer in the reporters' betting pool. With the $1200 he won, Mike begins buying drinks. The next morning he awakes with no memory of the night before. Hung over and believing that he failed to file his story, Mike sits beside the hotel pool drinking coffee. When an unfamiliar woman, Marilla Brown (Lauren Bacall), approaches him, Mike, through a series of misunderstandings, assumes she is a prostitute. As Marilla heatedly begins to correct him, he receives a call from his editor telling him he had received Mike's story, but that a corrupt boxing promoter was threatening Mike. Ending the call, Mike returns to Marilla who explains that she had helped him write his story. This begins a whirlwind eight day romance which ends with marriage. Only on the flight back to New York does Mike begin to discover that Marilla had hidden the details of her job, wealth and family connections in order to land Mike. This quickly causes friction.