Joe Sawyer's character of washed-up baseball player Babe Dooley was based on Chicago Cubs hitting great Hack Wilson whose alcoholism led to his steep professional and personal decline.
Harold Clurman, a noted stage director from New York's Group Theatre, made his screen directing debut and sole feature film with this production. It was the only film that Clurman and his frequent theatrical collaborator, writer Clifford Odets, made together. A June 1944 Hollywood Reporter news item noted that Clurman worked on the film's script with Odets.
When the characters discuss whether they should risk an encounter with a possible suspect, the cab driver says, "Steve Brodie took a chance." Brodie was (so he claimed in 1886, but the fact has always been disputed) the first man to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge and live.
Is the first film that Susan Hayward made following the birth of her twin sons on February 19, 1945. Production on this film started about three months later. This was her last picture for Paramount, where she was utterly miserable, and Universal quickly signed her to a more lucrative contract. Soon thereafter, her career skyrocketed.
At the beginning, as he's leaving the newsstand, again with June Goffe in her apartment, and toward the end when being questioned by Captain Dill, Alex uses the Latin phrase "non compos mentis", which translates to "of unsound mind."