The Car Man (Bourne) opera. I didn't even know it that well, and I still don't know it that well, to be honest. I know there are parallels, but it was more the feeling of the music and the feeling of what we all know Carmen to be." The story is loosely based on the 1934 novel "The Postman Always Rings Twice" by American novelist James M. Cain (1892–1977) and the 1946 and 1981 films of the same name respectively starring John Garfield and Lana Turner, and Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange. In the films, Frank, a drifter, stops at a rural California diner
The Beginning or the End actors cast in the movie were best known for film noir : Hume Cronyn for "The Postman Always Rings Twice"; Joseph Calleia, for "Gilda" and "Deadline at Dawn"; and Ludwig Stössel for Fritz Lang's "Cloak and Dagger". Groves's cooperation was secured by hiring him as a primary consultant, for $10,000 (). The portly Groves apparently had no objection to his portrayal by the slim and handsome Donlevy, except for the way in which he was shown bossing industrialists around. He had a scene in which he warned Roosevelt that the invasion of Japan would be opposed by Japanese nuclear weapons