[2] It takes the form of an autobiographical work, focusing on "portraits" of various people that had effects on the author throughout her life.

Gardiner was a wealthy American who went to medical school in the First Austrian Republic following World War I and became involved in the illegal and underground Social Democratic Party of Austria under the rule of Engelbert Dollfuss and the later Austrian Resistance to Nazism there before her return to the US in 1939.

[3] Following the film's release in 1977, New York psychiatrist Muriel Gardiner claimed she was the basis for the title character.

The story presents "Julia" as a close friend of Hellman's living in pre-Nazi Austria.

The events depicted in the film conformed to those described in Gardiner's 1983 memoir Code Name Mary.