The character played by Entwistle, that of Hazel Cousins, is a married woman in the film, who kills her husband and goes to prison. In the book, Hazel is a virgin who remains so simply because she is considered too beautiful; men are either too intimidated to approach her, assume she is married or engaged or believe that she will break their heart. Hazel eventually becomes a lesbian after she is seduced by the wife of the doctor treating her for tuberculosis, and starves herself to death in a sanitarium while suffering the heartache of having been abandoned by her lover Martha. In both the book and movie, May and June Raskob (played by Harriet Hagman and Mary Duncan) are twin sisters who work in a circus, but in the book they are overweight sideshow attractions, rather than photogenic trapeze artists as in the film.