Page "Baby Doll" Paragraph 3

In the Mississippi Delta, failing, bigoted, middle-aged cotton gin-owner Archie Lee Meighan ( Karl Malden ) has been married to pretty, empty-headed 19-year old virgin Baby Doll Meighan ( Carroll Baker ) for two years.

Archie impatiently waits for Baby Doll's 20th birthday just a few days away when, by prior agreement with Baby Doll's dying father, the marriage can finally be consummated.

In the meantime, Baby Doll still sleeps in a crib, wearing childish shorty-nightgowns and sucking her thumb, while Archie spies on her through a hole in a wall of their decrepit antebellum mansion, " Fox Tail.