Story conferences were held in March, with the author of the play "White Cargo" Leon Gordon, producer Bernie Hyman, supervising art director Cedric Gibbons, and production manager Joe Cohn. These early drafts toyed with the idea of a fight with a huge mechanical crocodile, and a spectacular jungle fire. By May 1933, a dialogue continuity by Howard Emmett Rogers was completed. This and earlier script and conference ideas became the basis for the various drafts of the eventual screenplay credited to James Kevin McGuinness.