Teenage orphan Nugget (Barry Curtis, THE MISSOURI TRAVELER) runs away from his abusive uncle to Oklahoma to be with his older brother Clint Saunders (Rock Hudson, GIANT) who is working as a dealer in a casino and is the lover of hostess Tracey Cromwell (Anne Baxter, CHASE A CROOKED SHADOW). Clint is unwilling to take on the responsibility of raising Nugget since he has announced to Tracey that he is planning to take on booming Colorado mining town Randsberg; but Tracey, pining for respectability, offers to go with him and take care of Nugget until Clint gets settled. Although Tracey tells Clint that she expects no commitments from him, she throws herself into domesticity setting up a home for herself and Nugget (while Clint visits for dinner and boards at a hotel for the sake of respectability), takes in tomboy Seely (Natalie Wood, BRAINSTORM) when her father is killed in a mining explosion, and becomes jealous as soon as Clint takes note of Judith (Julie Adams, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON), daughter of Senator Watrous (Carl Benton Reid, IN A LONELY PLACE) who owns the local bank and soon hires Clint after a deft demonstration of his money handling.

Learning of Tracey, Judith is not only jealous but possessive. "...if I can't have something that all my own, I just don't want it," Judith says, and she wants Clint. Hiring a detective, Judith discovers Tracey's past and drives Tracey out of town by anonymously posting a letter to the local judge who finds her unfit to care for Nugget and Seely (at which point Judith swoops in and offers to take them in). Clint tries to find Tracey but she has returned to the casino and become an equal partner with former boss Mac (William Hopper, PERRY MASON's Paul Drake), learning of his eventual marriage to Judith and other developments through letters from kindly widowed neighbor Mrs. O'Dell (Betty Garde, CALL NORTHSIDE 777) and Seely (who has received the brunt of Judith's abuse following the senator's death and her increasing fear that Clint will leave her). When Tracey returns a runaway Seely, an angry Judith lets slip that she was the one who drove Tracey out of town. No longer ashamed and very wealthy, Tracey decides to stay in Ransberg and open up a casino across the street from the Watrous mansion to spite Judith; but Clint's lingering love for Tracey and the realization that his marriage to Judith was a mistake will have tragic repercussions for all. Under the direction of Jerry Hopper (PONY EXPRESS), ONE DESIRE lacks the dramatic spark and stylistic precision that Douglas Sirk (ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS) brought to his melodramas for the film's producer Ross Hunter (MADAME X). The usually dependable and charismatic Baxter, Adams, Wood, and Hudson all have their moments but not often together, at their best here as more as elements of Maury Gertsman's workmanlike Technicolor cinematography alongside the colorful costumes and set dressings.