Following the release of "The Lost Weekend" in late 1945, Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett began to collaborate on a film about the problems faced by American military personnel stationed in Europe following World War II. Wilder went to Europe to research the project, but his visits to the concentration camps so disturbed him he returned to Hollywood determined to write and direct a musical comedy instead. He had known Bing Crosby since the crooner's days with Paul Whiteman, and he and Brackett had contributed to Crosby's film "Rhythm on the River" (1940). Since Crosby was Paramount's leading star and Wilder was the studio's top director, it was easy to convince executives to greenlight a collaboration between the two men. Wilder recalled reading about Valdemar Poulsen, a Danish inventor who had demonstrated a magnetic recording device for Franz Joseph I of Austria in the hope the Emperor would help finance his invention, and he and Brackett used this bit of historical fact as the starting point for their screenplay, which initially was titled "Viennese Story".