The supporting cast in this dark police crime drama, noted for its imaginative and evocative cinematography, includes Tom Brown, Laraine Day, Alan Curtis, and Marc Lawrence.

In the winter of 1937, Josef von Sternberg was in Vienna assembling the cast for the film version of Émile Zola’s Germinal, with Hilde Krahl tapped to play Catherine and Jean-Louis Barrault as Etienne.

[1] In October 1938, Sternberg returned to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer under a single-movie contract to direct actress Hedy Lamarr in New York Cinderella (later entitled I Take This Woman).

[2] Unhappy with his lack of control over the direction, Sternberg quit the production after a week: the film was completed by director Willard Van Dyke and released in February 1940.

[7] The Sergeant Madden screenplay, based on a story by William A. Ullman entitled “A Gun in His Hand” was an “over-plotted potboiler paying sentimental tribute to ‘the cop on the beat’...”[8][9] Wallace Beery, a “Metro institution”, provided a reliable source of revenue for the corporation, despite his “tiresome screen performance.”[10] When Sternberg attempted to elicit a more disciplined approach from Beery, the studio hierarchy instructed the director to cease his overly “demanding rehearsals.”[11][12] Despite the Metro's interference “Beery’s performance in Sergeant Madden is one of the least maudlin in his gallery of indistinguishable character roles” and “unusually controlled and believable” is attributable to Sternberg's influence.