[5][6] Mankiewicz and Lesser Samuels were also nominated for Best Story and Screenplay at the 23rd Academy Awards, losing to Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and D. M. Marshman Jr. for Sunset Boulevard.

Brooks is working at the hospital's prison ward when Johnny and Ray Biddle, brothers who were both shot in the leg while attempting a robbery, are brought in for treatment.

Ray convinces Edie that the doctors are attempting to play her for a "chump", and that she should tell Beaver Canal club owner Rocky Miller about the circumstances surrounding Johnny's death.

Despondent at what her actions have caused, Edie visits Wharton's home, where after initial racist misgivings, she befriends his black maid, Gladys.

Director Joseph Mankiewicz personally selected Sidney Poitier from a small group of finalists for the part of the young medical doctor Luther Brooks.

[5] In January 1949, Twentieth Century Fox acquired the film rights to Lesser Samuels' story and signed him to a ten-week contract to write the screenplay.

[1] After acquiring Samuels' story, writer Philip Yordan made suggestions that were included in the final film, such as portraying "real Negroes and how they live, as human beings," with authentic family dynamics.

Zanuck, like Joy, worried about the violence in the story, fearing it could lead to the film being banned in certain cities and result in financial disaster.

Despite initially approving a script where the character "Luther" was killed, Zanuck later felt the ending left a "feeling of utter futility" and changed it.

Mankiewicz called the ban "absurd" and sarcastically praised the city's efforts to maintain its high cultural standards by avoiding violence.

Mayor Kennelly formed a special committee from the Cook County Crime Prevention Bureau, which, after a screening on August 30, recommended lifting the ban.

Walter White and local NAACP officers wrote to the board, urging the film to be restored to its uncut version or, if not, to at least delete scenes with racial slurs.

This resolution was sent to the Production Code Administration, which replied that the film's producers aimed to be forceful and dramatic to benefit African Americans, not to harm them.

In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Thomas M. Pryor wrote:Sometimes the sting of a club will make more of an impression than appeals to the intellect.

No Way Out makes no attempt to mask the ugliness and the ignorance of a manifestation of bigotry, which has long festered in our society and is peculiarly at odds with the fundamentals of our political and religious philosophies.