The cast included the established stars Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland as sisters and rivals in romance and life.

Completed in 1942, the film was disapproved in 1943 for foreign release by the wartime Office of Censorship, because it dealt truthfully with racial discrimination as part of its plot.

In Richmond, Virginia, Asa and Lavinia (née Fitzroy) Timberlake gave their two daughters male names: Roy and Stanley.

Asa Timberlake has recently lost his piece of a tobacco company to his former partner William Fitzroy, his wife's brother.

William Fitzroy, Lavinia's brother and Asa's former partner in a tobacco business, doted on his niece Stanley and gave her expensive presents and money, and was very upset when she ran off.

Stanley continues to dissimulate and refuses to admit her responsibility, even when Roy arranges for her to see Parry at the jail.

The Ellen Glasgow novel, for which Warner Bros. paid $40,000 for the screen rights,[2] portrayed William Fitzroy's incestuous desire for his niece Stanley as well as racist attitudes in Richmond society.

Recommended by the director John Huston, the screenwriter Howard Koch believed he had to tone down these elements to satisfy the current Motion Picture Production Code.

[3] In his review of the completed film, the critic Bosley Crowther said it was "moderately faithful" to the novel and praised its portrayal of racial discrimination.

[4] Bette Davis, eventually cast as Stanley Timberlake despite her desire to play the "good sister" Roy,[5] was unhappy with the script.

While in the midst of costume and wig fittings, Davis was told her husband Arthur Farnsworth had been admitted to a Minneapolis hospital with severe pneumonia.

[5] Distressed to play Stanley rather than Roy – "I was not young enough for the part," Davis insisted [3] – the actress argued with producers about every aspect of her character.

The first preview was highly negative, with audience comments especially critical of Davis' hair, makeup, and wardrobe, the elements which she had controlled.

He felt "the one exceptional component of the film" is the "brief but frank allusion to racial discrimination" which "is presented in a realistic manner, uncommon to Hollywood, by the definition of the Negro as an educated and comprehending character.

He added "Director John Huston, unfortunately, has not given this story sufficient distinction...The telling of it is commonplace, the movement uncomfortably stiff.

Olivia de Havilland gives a warm and easy performance as the good sister who wins out in the end...But Miss Davis, by whom the whole thing pretty much stands or falls, is much too obviously mannered for this spectator's taste...It is likewise very hard to see her as the sort of sultry dame that good men can't resist.

In short, her evil is so theatrical and so completely inexplicable that her eventual demise in an auto accident is the happiest moment in the film.

Davis is dramatically impressive in the lead but gets major assistance from Olivia de Havilland, George Brent, Dennis Morgan, Billie Burke and Hattie McDaniel.

[1] On April 1, 2008, Warner Home Video released the film as part of the box set The Bette Davis Collection, Volume 3, which includes The Old Maid; All This, and Heaven Too; Watch on the Rhine; and Deception.