Wallis ended up adding extra footage of Scott at the expense of Stanwyck's screen time, which later led to a "contretemps" between Stanwyck and Wallis. Concerning her first film noir, Scott recalled how strange it was to be in a film with Stanwyck and only have one brief scene together. The screenplay by Robert Rossen depicts two separate story lines running in parallel—one dominated by Martha Ivers (Stanwyck) and the other by Antonia "Toni" Marachek (Scott). The Heflin character, Sam, is the connection between the story lines, which only overlap in the one scene where "femmes fatales" Martha and Toni meet.