Hitchcock returned to England from a trip to the Caribbean with a new idea for a film. He told John Maxwell about it, but Maxwell said that Walter C. Mycroft had a different film for him to do: a filmed version of Joseph Farjeon's play "Number Seventeen". Hitchcock was unhappy with this, as he considered the story to be too full of cliches and he wanted to do a version of John Van Druten's "London Wall". The director Thomas Bentley who eventually got to do "London Wall" at the time, wanted to direct "Number Seventeen".