using harsh and aggressive questioning to force the jury to sympathize with her. Jack's boss has been alerted about the affair, and secretly listens outside the courtroom. Realizing that Jack may damage his career, Lee changes her plea to guilty. As she is led away, Jack wants to marry Lee on the spot. She refuses, saying that if he still feels the same way after she has completed her prison term and he has had time to consider his decision, they can marry. She asks that he only stand beside her and hold her hand during her sentencing, and he promises to do so. Cast Barbara Stanwyck as Lee Leander Fred MacMurray as John Sargent Beulah Bondi as Mrs. Sargent Elizabeth Patterson as Aunt Emma Willard Robertson as Francis X. O'Leary Sterling Holloway as "Chilly" Willie Simms Charles Waldron as Judge (New York) Paul Guilfoyle as District Attorney, John's boss Charles Arnt as Tom Fred 'Snowflake' Toones as Rufus, John's servant Tom Kennedy as "Fat" Mike, the bail bondsman Georgia Caine as Lee's Mother John Wray as Farmer Hank Thomas W. Ross as Mr. Emory, small town judge Virginia Brissac as Mrs. Emory Spencer Charters as Judge at Rummage Sale Martha Mears as Nightclub Singer (uncredited) Development and production Preston Sturges suggested Great Love as a title for the film. The script, which blends a number of genres, proved difficult to write, and Sturges joked that it caused him "... to commit hara-kiri several times." As with all of Sturges' scripts, Remember the Night included a number of elements from his own life, including the falling-in-love-on-a-journey motif, inspired by his experience with Eleanor Post Hutton on the road to Palm Beach many years before, and the character of Jack's tough but loving Midwestern mother, based on the mother of his third wife Louise Sargent, from whom the lead character's name derived. Director Mitchell Leisen shortened Sturges' script considerably, both before and during shooting. This annoyed Sturges, and was one of the main reasons fueling his determination to direct his own scripts thereafter, which he did beginning with his next project, The Great McGinty. However, of all the films that Sturges wrote before he began directing, Leisen directed the only two films (Remember the Night and Easy Living) that Sturges bought for his personal film library. This film also contains a number of references to Easy Living; for instance, in the