**SPOILERS** Surviving a near-fatal car crash on the racetrack champion race-car driver Paul Dixon's, Dermot Walsh, spine is so badly damaged that he's left crippled from the waist down. A proud man who at the age of 35 was in the best of health is now reduced to a helpless cripple unable to care for. Paul is now looked after by his very possessive mother Mrs. Dixon, Grace Arnold, and tortured and caring wife Ann, Wendy Williams. Ann had earlier left him before his accident. She wasn't able to stand worrying anymore about Paul getting killed every time he went on the race track.
At the rehabilitation center where Paul is recovering and getting therapy Ann who's heart-sick over leaving Paul now desperately wan't to come back to him. Paul ignore and refuses to see Ann because he's is too hurt and embarrassed to have her see him as half a person then what who he was before Ann left him.
Getting the prognosis from Dr.Marshall, Ian Flemings, both Ann and Paul's mother Mrs. Dixon are told that Paul will never walk again but Paul's mother refuses to believe it. She spends almost all her life savings ,almost bankrupting her, in order to have Paul cured. Paul at first not knowing what to do with himself get's encouragement from another patient at the center Tommy, Anton Rodgers, a former dancer. Tommy's now trying to get back in the theater despite his crippled right leg that already required 19 operations. Tommy together with Ann, whom Paul finally got up enough courage to see and talk to, are the only persons who give him a sense of pride and will to live. Paul's mother even though she means well is only making Paul more depressed and helpless by treating him as if he'll never be able to take care of himself or be a man again. By her being so over-protective and foolishly optimistic she's making Paul an emotional, as well as an already physical, cripple.
Trying to cheer Paul up Ann take's him to the local zoo one afternoon where after really enjoying himself,for once. Getting involved with theses two young boys feeding the animals, who were getting dangerously close to the lions cage, Paul's pushed off his wheel chair by the boys. This as he tried to talk some sense into them. Everything that Paul tried to forget about his injury came back to him making him more depressed then ever as Ann yelled at the two kids, as they knocked him to the ground, "look out he's a Cripple".
Back at the center Tommy finally got called for an audition back in London for a part in a musical. That put Pal back on the road to recovery giving him hope that , like Tommy, he can also become a full and productive citizen again and not have to be cared for the rest of him life. It's when when Tommy came back completely destroyed because he wasn't even asked to preformed and told he's not needed by the theater director the poor and depressed man went into his room and hung himself.
The news of Tommy's suicide hit Paul so hard that he went both into shock and into an immediate and total self-induced catatonic state. The emotional breakdown that Paul was hit with looked like, just as from his crippling accident, he'll never recover. Ann trying to get Paul back to normal realizes that he'll need to be shown that he's not the worthless cripple that he keeps feeling that he is. Ann does what she knows has to be done, to get him out of that depressive and numbing state of mind. At the end of the film Ann find what Paul so desperately needed, to bring him back to not feel so sorry for himself and stop talking to anyone, a jolting shock to his system. That's what eventually shocked Paul back to being what he once was and what he felt that he'll never be, involved in cars and in racing them, again.
