Kyle's Elopement with Lucy:

Kyle arranged a hotel room in Miami Beach for the evening's stay, while the virtuous Mitch, who also had a romantic interest in Lucy, sarcastically joked about Kyle's never-ending, extravagant purchases: "Kyle's probably arranging to buy you the hotel, a stretch of the beach and a slice of the Gulf Stream."

Lucy: Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. It's an adventure. It's exciting.
Mitch: Are you looking for laughs? Or are you soul-searching?
Lucy: The latter, I guess. I think I'm beginning to know Kyle - and to like him.
Mitch: Well, in that case, I'm glad. I really am. [His hurt demeanor belied his words.]

Lucy was truly charmed mostly by the oil baron's whirlwind, "hooky-playing" ways, his lavish gifts and his millions, and even admitted that she actually liked him.

Their expensive Miami Beach hotel was adorned with pinkish-red hallways and white statues. The men would share a room across the hall, while "Miss Moore's suite" had a large sitting room overflowing with flowers and a chilled bottle of champagne, and an inner bedroom overlooking the moonlit ocean. Kyle asked Lucy: "What's not to like, huh?" The bedroom dresser drawer was well-stocked with glistening party handbags and the closet had an assortment of hats and designer dresses. Kyle nervously asked: "Anything missing?" but Lucy was so stunned she couldn't answer.

Mitch's reflection in the mirror separated Kyle and Lucy as he showed her other drawers full of accoutrements. In the bluish light of the outside porch, Lucy was stunned by the abundance of wealth.

In their shared room across the hall, Kyle was assured that he had "floored" Lucy, while Mitch was astonished that he "had Lucy figured wrong...I figured she'd be different than all the rest...If she were, she'd have spit right in your eye."

Upon Kyle's return an hour later to Lucy's room, he learned that she had already vacated it and taken a taxi to the airport. She had decided that she didn't want to play along and spend the night with him. In the film's most telling line of dialogue, Kyle discovered Lucy's character:

Lucy, you decent? Lucy, are you dec---? (reflectively musing to himself) I guess she was.

Kyle intercepted Lucy's American Airlines departure to New York from the Miami airport, boarded her plane, and begged her to take a later flight so that he could talk further with her. In the airport coffee room, she explained her hasty retreat and confirmed that she would remain virtuous: "I took a sudden dislike to the suite...Oh, it was beautiful at first glance. Then I thought how ugly it would be - in the morning."

Kyle sheepishly admitted his manipulative ploy to buy her love and to "have fun" (a 50's euphemism for having sex) with her: "Guilty as charged."

Lucy: I was tempted.
Kyle: Was it easy to overcome?
Lucy: Yes, you made it easy.
Kyle: How, by throwing my money at you?
Lucy: No. No, it wasn't that?
Kyle: What, then?
Lucy: It was the ride. 'Up in the blue' as you call it.
Kyle: Talked too much, didn't I?
Lucy: No. It was good talk. Only something happened to me, something as unexpected as the things you told me. I tried to tell myself it was, I don't know, sympathy, compassion. But it was more.

In the terminal building, Kyle sincerely apologized ("I'm...sorrier than I've ever been in my whole sorry life"). He proposed starting all over again with her, reversing the day's clock, and showing greater respect for her conservative values and domestic wishes. He suggested a return to New York to court her properly:

Just suppose I came to New York again. Not to play, but to work, to behave like, like Tom, Dick, and Harry. I-I'd ask you for dates, take you to lunches, to the movies. I'd be happy with a good night kiss. I'd think seriously about all the things I used to laugh at, like having a wife and a home and kids. Right now, there's one thing you don't have to suppose. I'm in love with you. So much so that I want to marry you.

The scene ended on their clench and kiss, and a dissolve to Mitch's room in the Miami Beach hotel the next morning, where he had been abandoned by them. Jack Williams (William Schallert) of the Miami Press informed him of the impulsive elopement-marriage of Lucy Moore to Kyle Hadley. Mitch, with his romantic torch still burning for Lucy, was disgusted with the sad revelation that his playboy friend had married such "a beautiful lady."

The next evening in their beach-side hotel room, in the middle of the night, Lucy awakened next to Kyle, picked his head off his pillow, and noticed a small, pearl-handled pistol hidden under there. Brass instruments emphatically underlined the discovery [of Kyle's secretively-hidden phallic symbol on her honeymoon night].

Hadley, Texas (5 weeks later)

Five weeks later, Mitch drove a company car (with H logo on the door) up to the front of the towering Hadley Building in the small Texas town. With a pencil over his ear, a baseball cap, a leather jacket, and a rolled-up geological map, Mitch entered the office of Jasper Hadley, to discuss a new oil drilling project. The tabloids had been reporting that Kyle and Lucy were still vacationing in Acapulco on their whirlwind honeymoon.

In contrast, Mitch was a confirmed bachelor, and had only a platonic interest in Kyle's sister Marylee:

Jasper: It's about time you got hitched, isn't it?
Mitch: No, I-I have trouble enough finding oil.
Jasper: I sure wish you felt different about Marylee.
Mitch: We grew up together, like brother and sister. I just can't see it any other way.
Jasper: Yeah. It's a shame, though, in a way. It's a real shame.

[Note: Rock Hudson's disinterested response can now be viewed as ironic, given his revealed homosexuality later in life.]

The happy newlyweds burst into the office, and Jasper warmly greeted his new daughter-in-law and had a one-on-one talk with her, while Mitch and Kyle retreated to Mitch's office. Because of Mitch's counsel and positive endorsement (that Jasper trusted), he didn't regard Lucy as a "gold-digger." She asked her father-in-law to regard how she had changed Kyle - "Give Kyle a chance. You may have to change your opinion of him." Kyle had sobered up since being married, but he still had many feelings of inferiority and inadequacy, brought on by constant comparisons to Mitch. Lucy explained that she had had a reforming and calming influence on him. In addition to giving up drinking, Kyle had also discarded his gun:

I know all about his anxieties and fears. You can forget about the pistol. Kyle threw it in the ocean.

Kyle's Trampish Sister Marylee - in Unrequited Love with Mitch:

While Kyle and Mitch were chatting in Mitch's office, Mitch received a tip-off phone call from Dan Willis (Robert J. Wilke), the proprietor/bartender of The Cove, a dive bar on the other side of town, where Marylee (in a tawdry, garish reddish-pink dress with the front zippered open, and pink gloves) was sharing a booth and drinks with a lower-class gentleman Roy Carter (John Larch). She was a bored, spoiled nymphomaniac with a reputation, who frequently propositioned men. The bar-owner requested that Mitch and Kyle rescue Marylee from degrading herself once again.

Kyle and Mitch drove up outside, parked next to Marylee's bright-red convertible sportscar, and entered the bar to find Marylee cozied up to Carter. After Kyle threatened Carter to stay away, he engaged in a losing fistfight with Carter. Marylee enjoyed watching her chivalrous defense by her brawling brother from afar, but was bitter about his weakness when he was knocked to the floor. When Marylee's "Sir Galahad" Mitch stepped in and beat Carter unconscious, she was pleased:

You do care about me, don't you?

Hot-headed Kyle threatened to kill Carter with a gun, but Mitch persuaded him to temporarily "forget it." Kyle obeyed Mitch but was still enraged: "I'll kill him" - to which Marylee joked: "A whiskey bottle's about all you'd ever kill." Kyle stormed off to the company car and drove off without Mitch.

Marylee waited outdoors in her sports car for Mitch to appear, to drive him back to town. During the ride (with obvious rear projection behind them of the road lined with oil wells), she was nostalgic about their "old haunt" by the river where they used to be happy as children ("Our own private world - mine and yours, and Kyle's") before the onset of adult pain and frequent weeping. She blamed her own personal anguish, implacable needs and longing, lack of fulfillment, self-pity, and sexual despair on her unrequited love for Mitch and his continual rejections of her. Marylee still dreamt of marrying him, but he turned down her proposition:

Marylee: Then you grew up and left me, you and Kyle, the rover boys. I guess that's why I hate him so, for taking you away from me. I love you, Mitch. I'm desperate for you. So desperate, I run to the likes of Roy Carter.
Mitch: All right, blame me.
Marylee: I'm not talking about blame. About love. Do you love me, Mitch?
Mitch: Like a brother.
Marylee: I don't want you as a brother.
Mitch: Can't be any other way, Marylee. Don't, please don't waste your life waiting for me.
Marylee: I'll wait, and I'll have you - marriage or no marriage.

In an upstairs bedroom of the Hadley mansion, Marylee first met her very proper sister-in-law Lucy, where she quickly stated: "I'm allergic to politeness." When asked about her feelings about Mitch, Marylee made the inevitable comparison between her self-hating, problematic brother (described as "on the wrong end of every punch") and the manly Mitch - comparisons that had forever doomed Kyle to decaying feelings of inadequacy.

Oh, there's a man for you - or for me, rather. Kyle starts something. Mitch finishes it for him. Kyle falls on his face. Mitch picks him up. Kyle steals. Mitch takes the blame. And there you have the secret story of Kyle Hadley and his electric personality.

Marylee also warned that she wasn't happy about a bride in the family: "Anyway, about your marriage, you have my condolences." They both traded barbs with each other. Lucy claimed to be brushing Marylee out of her hair, and Marylee called the unsuspecting Lucy "still wet behind the ears" in her naive, doomed-to-fail marriage to Kyle.

Mitch's Intentions to Leave the Hadleys:

After Kyle's marriage, Mitch became brooding ("got a bellyfull of the Hadleys") about his concealed attraction to Lucy - now snatched away and married. Returning to his modest wooden home after a hunting excursion with his father Hoak Wayne (Harry Shannon), Mitch carried a double-barreled shotgun [in comparison to Kyle' small pistol!]. He confided in his father that he was contemplating quitting Hadley Oil, moving away from Texas to Iran, and working for Trans American Oil, because of his conflicted feelings about being in love with Kyle's wife. He was upset about having to suppress his desire for Lucy:

Mitch: I'm in love with a woman that happens to be Kyle's wife.
Hoak: Is she in love with you?
Mitch: No. Strictly one-sided.

Marylee revisited the river - barefooted and nostalgically-tormented about a vow of undying love from Mitch as a child. [Note: The obviously-artificial interior set appropriately mirrored her self-delusional love for him.] In a well-played, poignant flashbacked scene (with audio only), she heard, in over-dub, the competitive threesome of Mitch (Robert Winans), Kyle (Robert Lyden) and herself (Susan Odin) conversing as younger children:

Young Kyle: Bet you can't throw that far, Mitch.
Young Marylee: Mitch can do everything better than you, Kyle.
Young Kyle: Shut up, Marylee.
Young Marylee: Throw it, Mitch. You made it, Mitch!
Young Kyle: Last one across is a rotten egg. (Splashing sounds)
Young Mitch: Hey, what's that purple stuff on your lips?
Young Marylee: Mulberry juice. Looks like lipstick, doesn't it?
Young Mitch: Yeah, sure does.
Young Marylee: Mitch? Am I beautiful?
Young Mitch: Uh-huh.
Young Marylee: Do you love me?
Young Mitch: Sure, you're my girl.
Young Marylee: When we grow up, you'll marry me, won't you, Mitch? I love you so much.

She turned around and glanced at a carved heart on the tree, with the initials MH and MW. She fell against the trunk, sobbing and lusting for Mitch to propose marriage to her.