"Woman of the World" (along with "Dangerous Female") was one of the working titles of this film, and they obviously churned out a few stills with that title before deciding on the original.
The falcon in the still above, much leaner than the one Bogart handled, appears to have been modeled on the bird on the dust jacket.
I love this film and have watched it several times. The flaws: Ricardo Cortez!! And is it a flaw not to measure up to a masterpiece like the Bogart version? Taken on its own merits, this is a moody, hardboiled, sexy crime film with a faithfulness to its source material that comes from it being filmed practically concurrent with the novel's appearance. Absolutely worth checking out.
ReplyDeleteAnd it had the advantage of being pre-code, so it's truer to the novel in matters of sex. Studio censors squelched a lot of good stuff from the later version.
ReplyDeleteIf you think of Sam Spade as a oily lounge lizard, Cortez is your man. I do like Bebe over Mary as the kind of babe a guy could fall for instantly.
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