Trivia

The pinball machine seen in this film is a very rare "Salute" model made by the Baker Novelty and Manufacturing Co. in 1941. The company only made pinball machines from 1939 to 1941. Baker Novelty started in 1935 making trade stimulators. This pinball machine was a flipper-less electro-mechanical single-player game that gave five balls for five cents. In excellent playable condition it could be worth $1,500 or more at auction in 2017.

The ocean liner seen at the end of the film is the MS Lafayette of the French Line (CGT). She began transatlantic service in 1930 and was one of the first diesel-powered ocean liners. Note the single funnel. On May 4, 1938 while undergoing overhaul at Le Havre, France, she caught fire and was damaged beyond repair and scrapped.

This was the first feature film directed by Jules Dassin, who had previously directed short subjects at M-G-M. After leaving M-G-M in 1947, Dassin directed two well-received films for Universal - "Brute Force" and "The Naked City". He joined the Communist Party of the United States, but left the party in 1939, he said, disillusioned after the Soviet Union signed a pact with Adolf Hitler. He was blacklisted in the late 1940s and moved to Europe, where he directed a number of critically regarded pictures over the next thirty years. Dassin, who was married to Greek actress Melina Mercouri, star of his 1959 film "Never on Sunday", died in 1995.

The film has noir-like qualities that director Jules Dassin would rely on a few years later in such films as Brute Force (1947), The Naked City (1948), Thieves' Highway (1949), and Night and the City (1950).

This film's initial telecast in Los Angeles took place Sunday 18 August 1957 on KTTV (Channel 11), followed by Philadelphia Monday 28 October 1957 on WFIL (Channel 6), by San Francisco 24 February 1958 on KGO (Channel 7), and, finally, by New York City 18 July 1958 on WCBS (Channel 2).