returning to the start of the film. Keyes arrives unnoticed and hears the truth. Walter tells him he is fleeing to Mexico, but collapses. Keyes lights a cigarette for Walter, while waiting for the police and an ambulance. Cast Uncredited Raymond Chandler cameo as a man reading a magazine outside Keyes' office as Neff exits Bess Flowers as Norton's secretary Betty Farrington as Nettie, Dietrichson's maid Teala Loring as Pacific All-Risk Insurance telephone operator Sam McDaniel as Charlie, Garage Attendant Miriam Nelson as Keyes' secretary Douglas Spencer as Lou Schwartz, Neff's office mate Production Background James M. Cain based his novella on a 1927 murder perpetrated by a married Queens, New York, woman and her lover whose trial he attended while working as a journalist in New York. In that crime, Ruth Snyder persuaded her boyfriend, Judd Gray, to kill her husband Albert after having him take out a big insurance policy – with a double-indemnity clause. The murderers were quickly identified, arrested and convicted. The front page photo of Snyder's execution in the electric chair at Sing Sing, captured by reporter Tom Howard using a hidden camera attached to his right ankle, has been called the most famous newsphoto of the 1920s. Double Indemnity began making the rounds in Hollywood shortly after it was published in Liberty magazine in 1936. Cain had made a name for himself the year before with The Postman Always Rings Twice, a story of murder and passion between a migrant worker and the unhappy wife of a café owner. Cain's agent sent copies of the novella to all the major studios and within days, MGM, Warner Bros., Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, and Columbia were competing to buy the rights for $25,000. Then a letter went from Joseph Breen at the Hays Office, and the studios withdrew their bids at once. In it, Breen warned: The general low tone and sordid flavor of this story makes it, in our judgment, thoroughly unacceptable for screen presentation before mixed audiences in the theater. I am sure you will agree that it is most important ... to avoid what the code calls "the hardening of audiences," especially those who are young and impressionable, to the thought and fact of crime. Eight years later, the novella was added to the collection of Cain's works titled Three of a Kind. Paramount executive Joseph Sistrom thought the material was perfect for Wilder,