Hero Francis Majcinek, called Frankie Machine, returns to Chicago from World War II with a Purple Heart and an addiction to morphine, which he relies on to overcome the pain of a war injury and to numb the guilt he feels for a drunken spree that put his wife, Sophie, in a wheelchair. His wife spends her dreary days making him feel guilty. Frankie, a shrewd dealer in a seedy West Side poker parlor, is known as the Man with the Golden Arm, both because of his rapid reflexes and his morphine habit. Frankie finds love and solace in Molly Novotny, a young part-time prostitute, but he remains trapped in his marriage and drug habit until he gets involved in an accidental killing and a not-so-accidental robbery that bring him to the fateful moment when the police come knocking to arrest him for his part in the killing.