This movie opens with Marsha and Cliff on a bus. They work as a team for a clothing manufacturer, where he is a salesman and she is a model. They are supposed to meet some buyers the next day, but she says she is getting off at Rock Point to see her sister and will catch up with him the next night, which means she won't be there to model the clothes as she is supposed to. She tells him to show them the clothes on hangers.
In real life, stealing a little time from the boss is no big deal, something most people have done at one time or another. In a movie, however, it often happens that people are punished severely for a mere peccadillo, and so we get a slight sinking feeling at this most venial of sins. But it gets worse. She starts taking samples out of Cliff's suitcase to give to her sister, whom she has not seen in two years, as a belated marriage present. This means she is not just stealing time from her boss, but dresses as well. Furthermore, she is putting Cliff on the spot. "What will I tell the home office?" Cliff asks, knowing he has to account for every item. "Tell them you ran into Jesse James," is Marsha's flip answer. In other words, she is not saying that she intends to reimburse the company as soon as she gets her next paycheck.
At this point, we might be wondering if they are in some kind of romantic relationship, in which case it might make sense that she would expect the man who is in love with her to cover for her. But the movie nips that in the bud. It is immediately made clear in their conversation that Cliff has been pursuing Marsha for some time, but to no avail, and she is firm in telling Cliff that it is time for him to give up. In short, she is imposing on a man whom she will not even go to dinner with.
When the bus pulls into Rock Point, Cliff gets off with Marsha just to stretch his legs. Marsha heads to a payphone to call her sister to come pick her up. She tells Cliff to give her a nickel, which he does. He tries to buy a pack of cigarettes at the counter, but is told to use the machine. Apparently cigarette machines were new at the time, because Cliff comments that the way things are going, pretty soon they won't need people. He returns to the phone booth just as Marsha hangs up.
Because no one answered the phone at her sister's house, Marsha retrieves the nickel, and, with Cliff standing right there, she opens her purse, holds the nickel about six inches over the opening, and drops it in, ostentatiously not returning it to Cliff. She could have simply slipped the nickel into her purse while still sitting in the booth, but the movie is going out of its way to make sure we notice this business about her keeping it.
But she's not done. She turns to Cliff and tries to bum a cigarette. As it is a fresh pack, Cliff has trouble removing one cigarette, and because the bus is about to leave, he ends up tossing her the whole pack as he gets aboard. She is stealing time from her boss, she stole some dress samples, she kept Cliff's nickel, and now she even has the poor guy's only pack of cigarettes, all in the space of ten minutes. Taking it all together, we see that Marsha is the kind of woman who, because she is attractive, believes it is her prerogative to take advantage of men, even men she has no interest in romantically.
None of this had to be in the movie, and it did not get in there by accident. The script could have been written differently, in which she simply tells a passenger she happens to be riding with that she is going to see her sister, after which she gets off the bus and uses her own nickel to make the call. The pack of cigarettes could have been left out entirely. Instead, script was written to make it clear that Marsha is a bit of a chiseler, and that she thinks she can get away with it on account of her looks. In real life, such women do. But this is a movie, and all that follows is punishment for her sins.
Shortly after the bus pulls out, Marsha witnesses a murder by the Ku Klux Klan. However, the man is white. In other words, we most emphatically do not see the Klan doing anything bad to African Americans. Later in the movie, at an inquest, we do see a few such African Americans in the crowd outside the courthouse, but that is the extent of their presence in the movie. This movie plays it safe, avoiding the race angle.
Furthermore, the people who made this movie are at pains to insist that the Klan is guilty of corruption and income tax evasion. In other words, it would not do to portray the Klan as composed of people who are sincere in their racist beliefs, who lynch people to preserve the Aryan cause of white supremacy. Instead, the Klan is portrayed cynically, making it out to be just a racket.
In any event, Marsha is almost raped by a Klansman, her brother-in-law, and then taken to a Klan meeting where she is whipped because she threatens to testify against them. He sister Lucy shows up with the county prosecutor and others to save her, but Lucy ends up being killed by her own husband.
As the movie comes to an end, we can only hope that Marsha has learned her lesson and will not take advantage of Cliff in the future.
