The writing credit "Michael O'Hara" is a pseudonym for director Douglas Sirk. He picked the name because when he started this movie he had just finished reading 'Appointment in Samarra' by John O'Hara.
The source story "The Shooting Party," Anton Chekhov's only full-length novel (1884), is set in the 1840's, but director Douglas Sirk updated the action to the 1910s in the narrative's framing sequences at the beginning and the end, so they would take place after the Russian Revolution. "With guys like [Fedor] and the Count going around, there had to be a revolution," Sirk explained. In the 1978 Russian adaptation, directed by Emil Loteanu, the action is set towards the close of the 19th Century. The film's famous waltz, composed by Eugen Doga, now considered his masterpiece, became a wedding standard worldwide.
Before hiring Rowland Leigh, director Douglas Sirk had asked James M. Cain to write the film, but he fired Cain and junked his script because Cain had made the characters seem too American.
George Sanders was actually born in Russia in 1906, and left with his family in 1917 during the Russian Revolution.
Douglas Sirk had originally wanted to film Anton Chekhov's 'The Shooting Party' at the German UFA studio before he fled Germany in 1937. He had wanted actor Willy Birgel to play Fedor, and when he made the U.S. version he picked George Sanders because he considered Sanders a similar type to Birgel.
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