With "Ruby Gentry", Vidor revisits the themes and scenario of "Duel in the Sun" (1946), in which an impoverished young woman, Jennifer Jones (Ruby née Corey, later Gentry), is taken in by a well-to-do couple. When the foster mother dies (Josephine Hutchinson) Ruby marries the widower (Karl Malden) for security, but he too dies under circumstances that cast suspicions on Ruby. She is harried by her evangelical preacher-sibling (James Anderson) and her love affair with the son of a local land-owing scion (Charleston Heston) leads to a deadly shootout, a climax that recalls Vidor's violent 1946 Western.