The screenplay by Brown Holmes is a loose adaptation of the 1929 novel The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, (original publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1929) which was previously filmed five years earlier, pre-code, under its original title directed by Roy Del Ruth and would be remade again five years later by director John Huston with Humphrey Bogart as detective Sam Spade.