who wrote the script, said Barbara Stanwyck was envisioned in the lead role and was going to play it; however, she then discovered her husband Robert Taylor had been unfaithful making Quo Vadis and did not want to make the film. In November 1950 producer Dan Angel announced Gloria Swanson would play the lead. However Swanson later dropped out; she said this was because she had received an offer to perform Twentieth Century on Broadway. March 1951 Bette Davis and Gary Merrill were stars; Merrill replaced Leo Genn who had been cast. Merrill wrote in his memoirs that neither he nor Davis had particularly liked the script, but were attracted by the chance to work together in England, and by a large fee; Davis was also pleased by the fact the cast would include Emlyn Williams, who wrote the original play on which Davis' 1945 film The Corn Is Green was based. This was the second on-screen pairing of then-married couple Davis and Gary Merrill, following All About Eve the previous year. They made Phone Call from a Stranger the following year. Rapper, who was selected by Davis to helm the film, had directed her in Now, Voyager ten years earlier. Filming went from April to June 1951. Exteriors of the United Artists release were filmed on location in Malham, West Riding of Yorkshire (now in North Yorkshire), and interiors were shot at the Nettlefold Studios in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. Davis was reportedly insecure and unhappy during filming. She called Steel "a beautiful prop". Of the project, star Bette Davis recalled "We had nothing but script trouble. Gary (Merrill) and I often wondered why we agreed to make this film after we got started working on it. Emlyn (Williams) rewrote many scenes for us, which gave it some plausibility, but we never cured the basic ills of the story." According to Merrill, "the basic premise" of the film "was pretty crummy to begin with. But Bette believed that with Emlyn's help the script could be improved. So the two of them went to work, altering this and that. When this happened I usually found a place to lie down, being my lazy self, to wait for the action to begin. The fact I wasn't doing anything bugged the hell out of Bette." Critical reception The New York Times described the film as "a garrulous but occasionally interesting excursion into murder and