The scene in which Bigelow runs in panic through the streets after learning he has been poisoned was what is considered a 'stolen shot' where the pedestrians along the sidewalk had no idea a movie was being made and no warning that Edmond O'Brien would be plowing through them.
According to some sources, the idea for this film's unusual story line was taken from the German film L'homme qui cherche son assassin (1931) ("The Man Who Seeks His Murderer"), directed by Robert Siodmak and based on a play co-written by Billy Wilder, but "D.O.A." does not appear to be a remake of the earlier film because, although there is a similarity in the basic premise--a man searching for his own murderer--the two stories are fundamentally different. Furthermore, in the credits for this film, both the story and screenplay are credited to Russell Rouse and Clarence Greene, with no mention of any earlier source material. "D.O.A." itself has been remade a number of times as noted on the Connections page.
The Phillips Export-Import Co. in Los Angeles, where Bigelow is sent , has its offices in the Bradbury Building, an iconic office building designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977 and the scene of numerous movie shoots, and later television productions, from the 1940s right through the 2000s. Among the most famous movies with scenes shot in the Bradbury Building are Double Indemnity (1945), The Unfaithful (1947), D.O.A. (1949), I, The Jury (1953)(filmed in 3-D), Good Neighbor Sam (1964), Marlowe (1969), Chinatown (1974), The Cheap Detective (1978), Blade Runner (1982) and a number of others.
When Frank Bigelow registers at the Allison Hotel in Los Angeles, the name directly above his is Russell Rouse, one of the film's writers. Also on the register is director of photography Ernest Laszlo and assistant director Marty Moss.
The failure of the original copyright holder to renew the film's copyright resulted in it falling into public domain, meaning that virtually anyone could duplicate and sell a VHS/DVD copy of the film. Therefore, many of the versions of this film available on the market are either severely (and usually badly) edited and/or of extremely poor quality, having been duped from second- or third-generation (or more) copies of the film.
The good news is that copies from high-quality prints are now available.
The good news is that copies from high-quality prints are now available.