He read Patricia Highsmith's debut novel on a train - appropriately enough - and he, Alma and Whitfield Cook quickly made it their own, making significant changes, one being to convert Bruno's repugnant alcoholic into a charming and covert gay. Raymond Chandler was brought in but tried to make every action explainable, drank too much and attempted to steer the script back to Highsmith's book. It ended unhappily and his script was ignored. Then a former Ben Hecht associate Czenzi Ormonde was brought in and she wrote the scenes that were played by Marion Lorne - dotty and yet almost as mad as her son. She and Barbara Keon finished the script.
As to the film itself, not much to add to previous jottings like
this one.
Robert Burks' cinematography was the only Oscar nomination - it was their first collaboration.
A Warner Brothers production.
Here's a fascinating aside from 'Hitchock et L'Art; Coincidences Fatales' from the Pompidou 2001 exhibition:
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