Background
Background
James M. Cain based his novella Double Indemnity on a 1927 murder perpetrated by Ruth Snyder, married to Albert Snyder, and her lover Henry Judd Gray, who colluded with an insurance agent to obtain a $45,000 policy with a double-indemnity clause without Albert's knowledge and then have him murdered.
Cain had become a popular crime novelist following the publication of The Postman Always Rings Twice in 1934, and Double Indemnity began making the rounds in Hollywood shortly after it was serialized in Liberty magazine in 1936. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Bros., Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, RKO Radio Pictures, and Columbia competed over the rights to adapt Double Indemnity, but the fervor ended when Hays Office censor Joseph Breen warned in a letter to the studios:
The general low tone and sordid flavor of this story makes it, in our judgment, thoroughly unacceptable for screen presentation before mixed audiences in the theater. I am sure you will agree that it is most important...to avoid what the code calls "the hardening of audiences," especially those who are young and impressionable, to the thought and fact of crime.
In 1943, Cain's novella was anthologized with two others in Three of a Kind. Paramount's Joseph Sistrom bought the rights for $15,000, envisioning Billy Wilder as the director of an adaptation. Paramount resubmitted the novella to the Hays Office and got an identical response as seven years earlier; Paramount then submitted a partial screenplay to the Hays Office. It was approved with three objections about portraying the disposal of a corpse, the gas chamber execution scene, and the skimpiness of the towel worn by the female lead.
Cain felt Joseph Breen owed him $10,000 for vetoing the purchase of the property for $25,000 in 1936.
- ^ "Shadows of Suspense". Double Indemnity Universal Legacy Series DVD. Universal Studios. 2006.
- ^ a b c Lally, Kevin (1996). Wilder Times: The Life of Billy Wilder. New York: Henry Holt and Company. pp. 125–139. ISBN 978-0-8050-3119-5.
- ^ Phillips, Gene D. (2010). Some Like it Wilder: The Life and Controversial Films of Billy Wilder. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-8131-2570-1.
- ^ Hoopes, Roy (1982). Cain. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. pp. 347–348. ISBN 978-0-03-049331-7.
Production credits
- Director: Billy Wilder
- Writers: Raymond Chandler, Billy Wilder
- Production country: United States of America