***SPOILERS*** It's when department chain store owner Robert Ballington, Robert Ryan, got the news that his daughter Janet, Katharine Ross, was in police custody involved with her friends in a hit and run killing, of a Christmas shopper, that night he did everything to get her off on the vehicular homicide and possible DWI charge.
The problem Mr. Ballington found out is that his daughter Janet and the friends with her in the car Paul Althea & Marty, Adam Roarke Sharon Farrell & Hugh Sanders, have taken an oath of one for all and all for one in sticking together and not revealing who was behind the wheel of the death car when it ran down and killed the man that rainy evening. Mr. Ballington who went down to the Rest-O Motel where his daughter and her friends were staying just before the accident is told by the night clerk, Mr.McMurty, Jay Novello,that not only was Janet sharing a room with one of her male friends but was the person behind the wheel of the car that tragic evening!
Acting like the loving and concerned father that he is Mr. Ballington tries to pay off Mr. McMurty to keep his mouth shut and not tell the police what he saw. Agreeing on a $1,000.00 payoff Mr.Ballington is just about to hand it, in a personal check, over to McMurty that evening when to his shocked and surprise he finds Janet and her boyfriend Paul, striped down to their under-ware, in her room together! As it turned out Janet and Paul were married three months ago and kept that news from her father and mom Mrs. Edna Ballington, Phylis Avery!
****SPOILERS**** Seeing how he and his wife Edna were taken advantage by Janet and how spoiled rotten she had become Mr. Ballington finally came to his senses. Telling Mr.McMurty to take a walk minus the $1.000.00 payoff he promised him to keep quiet Mr. Ballington decides to go to the police and tell the truth about Janet and her friends himself! It was a hard decision on Mr. Ballington's part, but in the end it was the right one for him to make. Sure Janet well have to pay for her crime together with her friends but in the end it will finally straighten her out the way that Mr. Ballington and his wife Edna never could or would. And very probably prevent her from either ending up dead in a future car accident or drug overdose that she and her friend are surly heading for. It was this piece of "tough love" on Mr. Ballington's part that in the end did far more to help his troubled daughter Janet then hurt her! And after she's finally brought to her senses in spending time behind bars and thinking things over Janet will thank her dad for doing what he did.
