Academy Award winner Gary Cooper stars with Lauren Bacall and Academy Award winner Patricia Neal in this epic drama of strong-willed people and the changes they bring to the tobacco fields, the land of the Bright Leaf. North Carolina, late 1800s. Brant Royle's (Cooper) family was forced off the tobacco fields they had farmed for Major Singleton (Donald Crisp), but Brant has returned with a plan to use machinery to mass produce cigarettes. When Brant's idea earns him a fortune and destroys Singleton, Brant marries the major's daughter, Margaret (Neal), to save her from poverty, instead of the woman he loves, Sonja Kovac (Bacall). But Margaret only resents Brant's success, and she devotes her life to destroying her husband.