[3] Alan Mitchell is a returning Korean War veteran who joins his father Walter's garment company, Roxton Fashions.

After he tells Walter to sever his ties with the hoodlum enforcers, Kenner is killed when the freight elevator he enters, which was just 'fixed' by one of the hoods disguised as a repairman, plunges 12 stories to the bottom of the shaft.

When he finally convinces his father to fire the union-busting gangsters, Walter is killed and Ravidge attempts to take over the factory.

In November 1955 Columbia announced they had purchased the rights to a Reader's Digest article, "Gangsters in the Dress Business" by Lester Velie, about the efforts of organized crime to infiltrate the garment industry.

Executive producer Jerry Wald said the film would pay tribute to the efforts of unions to fight crime, and be shot in part on location in the garment district in New York.

[5][6] Aldrich says he mostly agreed to do the film so Columbia would finance the second movie he wanted to make, Until Proven Guilty.

[10] The lead roles were given to Lee J. Cobb, who had been in On the Waterfront (1954), a similar organized-crime-in-labor story for Columbia, and Kerwin Mathews, who was under contract to the studio and had just starred in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

[11] Aldrich says he had to use Matthews along with other Columbia contract players such as Gia Scala, Robert Loggia, and Valerie French.

"[7] Aldrich called the movie "the first pro-labor picture; in it I am trying to emphasize another particular aspect of our times - the tragedy of the small businessman, caught between the ever expanding large corporations and the pressures of organized labor.

"[16] Aldrich says he had become interested in the Lee J. Cobb character, the man "squeezed out by both big business and excessive labor demands and gangsterism... also fettered by being Jewish, of which he was proud but also subconsciously angry since it interfered with his complete freedom due to the survival of some brands of anti-Semitism.

[8] He may have seen it later because he said Sherman made it "very quiet and very mild; it became a love story, also about a father who wanted give his business to his son, all that bullshit.

"[9] Aldrich went on to sue Columbia for not financing Storm in the Sun, a film he wanted to make.