The film stars Jean Simmons, Guy Madison, and Jean-Pierre Aumont, with Evelyn Varden and Peggy Knudsen.

She returns from New York to a scolding mother, who hopes Hilda will have the good sense to marry successful builder Russell Burns and finally settle down.

Warned by a friend about Russell's possessive mother, including her way of feigning a heart condition, Hilda declines a $50,000 bribe from Mrs. Burns to leave town.

He wrote that the play became "a story of how marriage and love and death happened, at least in this case, to stem from the fumbling, painful efforts of a woman and her mother to understand each other and themselves.

[8] Eventually after a year of being unable to get the right star the Theatre Guild withdrew, and Arthur Schwartz, a composer, decided to present it.

[9] The original play had its first performance on Broadway on November 1, 1950 at the Coronet Theatre, directed by Hume Cronyn and designed by Howard Bay.

"[10] In September 1955, the play was among six properties that 20th Century Fox purchased from the Charles Feldman Group (the others included The Wayward Bus, Lonely Steeple, Tender Mercy, Bernadine and Heaven Knows, Mr Allison).

[11] In November 1955, 20th Century Fox announced that it had purchased the film rights and that the movie would be written and directed by Phillip Dunne.

[14] Dunne was the screenwriter on three previous 20th Century Fox epic films which star Simmons, The Robe (1953), Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954) and The Egyptian (1954).