Hedy Lamarr made her American film debut in Algiers, although she was already known for her appearance in the 1933 Czech film Ecstasy, in which she appeared nude. Howard Dietz, the head of MGM's publicity department, quizzed her about this, and she admitted to having appeared nude. "Did you look good?", he asked. "Of course!" "Then it's all right", he said, "no damage has been done." Production Walter Wanger, the producer of Algiers, purchased the rights to the French film Pepe le Moko in order to remake it, and bought all prints of the film to prevent it from competing with his film in the U.S. Wanger used most of the music from the French film in this remake as well as background sequences. The first version of the script for Algiers was rejected by the Breen Office because the leading ladies were both portrayed as "kept women," and because of references to prostitution, the promiscuity of the lead character, and his suicide at the end of the film, which was directed to be changed to his being shot instead of killing himself. Backgrounds and exteriors for the film were shot in Algiers by a photographer named Knechtel, who was based in London. These photographs were integrated into the film by cinematographer James Wong Howe. United Artists had considered Ingrid Bergman, Dolores del Río, and Sylvia Sidney for the female lead, but, as Boyer tells it, he met Hedy Lamarr at a party and introduced her to Wanger as a possibility for his co-lead. Cromwell says about Lamarr that she could not act. "After you've been in the business for a time, you can tell easily enough right when you meet them. I could sense her inadequacy, Wanger could sense it, and I could see Boyer getting worried even before we started talking behind Hedy's back...Sometimes the word personality is interchangeable with presence although they aren't the same thing. But the principle applies, and Hedy also had no personality. How could they think she could become a second Garbo?...I'll take some credit for making her acting passable but can only share credit with Boyer fifty-fifty." Boyer did not enjoy his work on Algiers. "An actor never likes to copy another's style," he said, "and here I was copying Jean Gabin, one of the best." Director Cromwell "would run a scene from the original and insist we do it exactly that