Rogers recently had won the Academy Award for Best Actress for "Kitty Foyle" and now was in a position to select her own director. Agent Leland Hayward represented both Rogers and Wilder, who asked him to intercede with her on his behalf, and Brackett also urged her to meet the neophyte director. She agreed, and she and the screenwriters met during the filming of "Roxie Hart". They pitched the film during lunch at an Italian restaurant, and Rogers later recalled Wilder "was charming, a European gentleman ... I've always been a good judge of character. I decided then and there that we would get along and that he had the qualities to become a good director ... I felt he would be strong, and that he would listen. He certainly understood how to pay attention to a woman." What also appealed to Rogers was the basic concept of the film. As a younger woman, she had pretended to be eligible for a child's fare when traveling by train with her cash-strapped mother on more than one occasion, so she easily identified with the plot and agreed to make the film. Wilder also agreed to her suggestion that he cast her own mother as her mother in the film.