In his feature film debut, Glenn Ford plays a department-store clerk who saves up enough money to buy a small patch of land in Arizona. Unable to afford a car, Ford hitchhikes to his new home, and along the way teams up with a transient (Richard Conte) and an illegal alien (Jean Rogers). The girl is torn between both men, but ultimately opts for the clerk. To save the girl from deportation, the clerk marries her, and together they make a new life for themselves in his tiny Arizona homestead. Adapted from a story by Dalton Trumbo, Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence was directed by former silent film star Ricardo Cortez.