Barton watches dailies from another wrestling film being made by Capitol Pictures; the date on the clapperboard is December 9, two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Later, when Barton celebrates the completed script by dancing at a USO show, he is surrounded by soldiers. In Lipnick's next appearance, he wears a colonel's uniform, which is really a costume from his company. Lipnick has not actually entered the military but declares himself ready to fight the "little yellow bastards". Originally, this historical moment just after the United States entered World War II was to have a significant impact on the Hotel Earle. As the Coens explained: "e were thinking of a hotel where the lodgers were old people, the insane, the physically handicapped, because all the others had left for the war. The further the script was developed, the more this theme got left behind, but it had led us, in the beginning, to settle on that period."