Douglas Sirk had originally wanted to film Anton Chekhov's 'The Shooting Party' at the German UFA studio before he fled Germany in 1937. He had wanted actor Willy Birgel to play Fedor, and when he made the U.S. version he picked George Sanders because he considered Sanders a similar "type" to Birgel.
Before hiring Rowland Leigh, director Douglas Sirk had asked James M. Cain to write the film, but he fired Cain and junked his script because Cain had made the characters seem too American.
The source story by Anton Chekhov, 'The Shooting Party', is set in the 1840's, but director Douglas Sirk moved up the setting to the 1910s so the framing sequences at the beginning and the end would take place after the Russian Revolution. "With guys like Fedor and the Count going around, there had to be a revolution," Sirk explained.
The writing credit to "Michael O'Hara" is a pseudonym for director Douglas Sirk. He picked the name because when he started this movie he had just finished reading 'Appointment in Samarra' by John O'Hara.