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Joseph Sistrom was born on 7 August 1912 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for The Atomic City (1952), The Night of January 16th (1941) and Incendiary Blonde (1945). He died on 7 April 1966 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Producer, Additional Crew, Writer
- August 7, 1912
- Joseph Sistrom
- April 7, 1966
- It Was Inspired by A Real Murder.
- It Fought The Production Code For years.
- Billy Wilder’s Writing Partner at The Time Turned It down.
- Wilder and Raymond Chandler Hated Working Together.
- No One Wanted to Play Walter Neff.
- Barbara Stanwyck Was Scared to Play Phyllis Dietrichson.
- Studio Executives Hated Stanwyck’s Wig.
- The Original Ending Featured Neff’s Execution.
- Wilder Was Very Frustrated by The Film’S Oscar losses.
- There Are Three Other Adaptations.
Before he began making serious headway as a writer of fiction, Double Indemnity author James M. Cain worked as a journalist in New York, and it was there that he stumbled upon the real-life murder case of Albert Snyder, who was killed in 1927 by his wife, Ruth Brown Snyder, and her lover, a corset salesman named Henry Judd Gray. Before committing t...
Double Indemnity was first placed before the Production Code Administration in Hollywood in 1935, the year before it was serialized in Liberty, and the story was immediately met with resistance from PCA head Joseph I. Breen, who noted that a film version would likely be rejected according to the code. Among Breen’s concernsin a 1935 letter that eve...
It was producer Joseph Sistrom who first brought Double Indemnity to Wilder, believing the filmmaker would respond well to Cain’s hard-boiled story of deception and seduction. Wilder did indeed respond well to the film, and took it on as what was, at the time, only his third Hollywood effort as a director after years of mostly screenwriting work. W...
Wilder agreed to work with Chandler after reading some of his prose and finding the future author of The Long Goodbyehad a knack for clever lines of dialogue and description. Chandler had never written a script, though, and according to Wilder the pulp legend did not understand that the screenwriting process was one that took several months. Instea...
After the project had weathered the Production Code and the laborious screenwriting process, Wilder hit even more snags when it came to casting. According to Wilder, “everybody turned [him] down” when he was looking for a leading man to play insurance salesman-turned-killer Walter Neff, including crime drama stars Alan Ladd and George Raft, who ask...
Neff was not the only role Wilder ran into difficulty with. He wanted Barbara Stanwyck—then the highest-paid actress in Hollywood—to play the role of seductress and murderess Phyllis Dietrichson. Stanwyck was a serious, acclaimed actress with two Oscar nominations to her name already, but the idea of playing such a dark role was intimidating to her...
Stanwyck’s performance in Double Indemnity was hailed as one of her best even in 1944, when critics and executives were finally seeing the completed film, but there was one complaint that kept going around, and that some viewers still notice: her hair. Though it may seem like an immovable part of the film now, the blonde wig Phyllis wears was a not...
Cain’s original novella ends with the two lovers committing suicide together, but since suicide was forbidden by the Production Code, Wilder and Chandler had to develop an alternate ending, and came up with the notion that Neff would shoot Phyllis after she wounds him, and he would then return to the insurance office to record his confession, only ...
Double Indemnity was nominated for seven Oscars in 1945, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actress. It won none of these awards, and lost several to eventual Best Picture winner Going My Way. When Leo McCarey was announced as that year’s Best Director winner for his work on Going My Way, Wilder had had enough of losin...
Though its journey to the screen was long, Double Indemnity was critically acclaimed upon release, and quickly developed a reputation as a classic. Today it stands as an essential film for fans of Wilder, Stanwyck, and MacMurray, as well as a seminal piece of film noir. That didn’t stop other adaptations of Cain’s novel from trying to replicate som...
On August 8, 1952 in London, Rosalyn married Joseph Sistrom, an American film producer (Double Indemnity, Botany Bay). A newspaper account described the happy couple accompanied by Rosalyn’s pretty, blonde daughter, Carol, then age 9.
Joseph Sistrom was born on August 7, 1912 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for The Atomic City (1952), The Night of ...
Joseph Sistrom is known as an Producer and Associate Producer. Some of their work includes Double Indemnity, Pocketful of Miracles, Wake Island, The Atomic City, Botany Bay, Submarine Command, The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt, and Star Spangled Rhythm.
Joseph Sistrom, né le 7 août 1912 à Chicago (États-Unis) et mort le 7 avril 1966 à Los Angeles (États-Unis), est un producteur de cinéma américain.
Double Indemnity is a 1944 American crime thriller film noir directed by Billy Wilder, co-written with Raymond Chandler, and produced by Buddy DeSylva and Joseph Sistrom. The film was based on James M. Cain 's novella of the same name, which ran as an eight-part serial in Liberty magazine beginning in February 1936.
