The motion picture was adapted from two novels – Thomas Walsh's The Night Watch and William S. Ballinger's Rafferty – by Roy Huggins, who went on to great success creating television series, including The Fugitive, Maverick, and The Rockford Files.

The car won't start, and Paul Sheridan (Fred MacMurray) appears at her window.

Next morning, we learn Sheridan is a cop, sent undercover to befriend Lona, hoping she will lead them to her boyfriend, Wheeler.

Police Lieutenant Karl Eckstrom (E.G. Marshall) wants Wheeler alive for questioning.

Among the police on duty are Sheridan, Rick McAllister (Phillip Carey), and Paddy Dolan (Allen Nourse).

As Paddy leans in to inspect the bag, Sheridan pretends that Wheeler is trying to escape and shoots him dead.

As he's been shot with his own gun, Sheridan is able to claim Paddy committed suicide, after realising that deserting his post would mean the loss of his pension.

Miss Stewart follows McAllister as he's investigating events in her building and tells him about the man she saw in Lona's apartment when she asked for the ice.

While Eckstrom and McAllister are questioning Lona, Miss Stewart takes out the garbage and bumps into Sheridan in the hall.

It was developed by producer Philip Waxman who was going to make the movie, based on a Saturday Evening Post serial by Thomas Walsh and adapted into a script by Orin Jennings and Stanley Ellin.

Waxman sold the script to Columbia, and the studio assigned Jules Shermer as producer.

So I took some things from a previous film that I had done on the lot (1947's Framed with Glenn Ford and Janis Carter) and borrowed from that.

[1] The budget was relatively low meaning the studio had to cast an inexpensive actor, Kim Novak, as the female lead.

“Kim Novak...has a role which fits her as tautily as some of the dresses...and is photogenic enough to make almost any man take a second look at her,” wrote the Chicago Tribune.

The film has been previously produced, but it's not bad, as crime melodramas go.”[8] An English reviewer described the film as “Reminiscent of the good old days, when one could visit the local in the expectation of seeing a story told in pictures, black and white and incisive, aiming simply to please....The intrigue is not always plausibly presented by the script; but the film is principally weakened by Fred MacMurray's passionless performance as the detective, and the inexperience of Kim Novak as the girl.

The reviewer for The New York Times commented: "Fred MacMurray is going through the motions of his Double Indemnity role in a mild facsimile.

Much later, Chicago Reader film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, "An aging cop (Fred MacMurray) falls in love with a bank robber's girlfriend (Kim Novak in her first major role, and if you're as much of a pushover for her early work as I am, you can't afford to miss this).

"[11] Critic Dennis Schwartz liked the film and wrote, "Pushover covers familiar film noir territory, but does a good job of showing how easy it is to lose control of one's life when one is so vulnerable, obsessed and emotionally weak.

Novak does a fine job in her first starring role as a heartless femme fatale who does have a heart after all.