In an act of revenge, one of his old jilted girlfriends, minister""s daughter-turned-prostitute Lulu Bains (Shirley Jones) sets him up with her pimp and frames him with photographs taken in a compromising situation.The simultaneous, opposing movements - a forward zoom and a reverse tracking shot - also represent the attraction and repulsion that the main protagonists experience in their relationships.Got it?Considered ""new poison"" in the club, Prewitt spots "the Princess" across the room - the aloof, but warm-hearted, dark-haired "hostess" who is known as Alma (Lorene) (Donna Reed).He argues with an engineer""s grasp of facts against its construction - using previous experience from the Van der Lip dam disaster that killed five hundred people.