Boyhood friends Parris Mitchell (Robert Cummings) and Drake McHugh (Ronald Reagan) have grown up together in the town of Kings Row. Parris wants to be a doctor and his grandmother arranges for him to be to be tutored by Dr. Alexander Tower (Claude Rains), something of a recluse who seems to have no patients. Parris knew his daughter Cassandra (Betty Field) when they were young, but Dr. Tower home-schooled her from a young age. Now young adults, they fall madly in love, but tragedy strikes just as Parris is about to set off for Vienna, Austria to begin medical school. Drake is a happy-go-lucky sort, handsome with many of the local girls chasing after him and he them. He's particularly fond of Louise Gordon (Nancy Coleman), daughter of the town's other doctor, Henry Gordon (Charles Coburn). Her parents dislike the young Drake and refuse him permission to call on their daughter, which drives Louise to the brink of madness. When Drake has an accident, Dr. Gordon exacts a sadistic revenge leaving it to Parris and another childhood friend, Randy Monaghan (Ann Sheridan), to pull Drake back from the edge.—garykmcd