To satisfy censors, the story is set in a Shanghai casino, rather than a brothel; the name of the proprietress of the establishment is softened to "Mother Gin-Sling", rather than the impious "Mother Goddam" in the Colton's original. Gin-Sling's half-caste daughter Gene Tierney – the result of a coupling between Gin-Sling and British official Sir Guy Charteris Walter Huston – is the product of European finishing schools rather than a courtesan raised in her mother's whore house. The degradation of daughter who sports the nickname "Poppy" is no less degraded by her privileged upbringing.