1944 film
Directed by Billy Wilder with a screenplay by Raymond Chandler, Double Indemnity was “the first significant film created from a Cain book, and it remains the best.”[14]
In 1935 when Liberty magazine was preparing to release Double Indemnity by installments, M-G-M studios requested the Hays Office evaluate the piece for film adaptation. Joseph Breen emphatically condemned the depictions of murder and adultery, killing any Hollywood interest in the novel.[15]
With the 1943 inclusion of Double Indemnity in Three of a Kind, a hard-bound collection of Cain novellas, interest in the work was revived. Cain’s agent H. N. Swanson brought the work to the attention of Austro-Hungarian writer-director Billy Wilder, and Wilder instantly acquired the rights for $15,000. Cain was chagrined that the piece, valued at 25,000 in 1935, was still discounted by the waning censorship risks imposed by the Hays Office.[16] Initially, Wilder enlisted Cain to help write the film script. His dialogue, which was pitched to his literary forms, did not translate well to film. Wilder hired Raymond Chandler, author of The Big Sleep, and he and Wilder completed the screenplay. The scenario and story remained “as close as possible to the original story” but gave centrality to the relationship between Neff and Keyes. Literary critic Paul Skenazy observes that “Wilder and Chandler shift the focus from the lovers’ passion to the cost of that passion, and from Neff’s relationship with Phylis to the conflict of loyalties brought on by Phylis.” The script was approved by Joseph Breen.[17]
Cain was deeply gratified at the critical and commercial success of Double Indemnity, as well as the lead performances. Cain wrote to actor Barbara Stanwyck who plays Phyllis Nirdlinger [Phyllis Dietrichson in the film version]
it is a very creepy sensation to see a character imagined by yourself step in front of your eyes exactly as you imagined her.[18]
To actor Fred MacMurray who plays Walter Huff [Walter Neff in the film version] Cain wrote:
The way you found tragedy in his shallow, commonplace, smart-cracking skull will remain with me for a long time and, indeed, reinforce an aesthetic viewpoint that many quarrel with; for if I have any gift, it is to take such people and show that they can suffer as profoundly as anybody else…[19]
Radio
The Screen Guild Theater twice adapted Double Indemnity as a radio drama. Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck reprised their roles in the first broadcast on March 5, 1945. Stanwyck appeared again on the February 16, 1950 version, this time opposite Robert Taylor.[20]
On October 15, 1948, Ford Theatre produced another radio adaptation with Burt Lancaster and Joan Bennett[21] and the October 30, 1950 broadcast of Lux Radio Theater with MacMurray and Stanwyck.[22]
1973 TV film
The film was remade in 1973 as a television film starring Richard Crenna. This credits for this version state that it is based on the original novel by James M. Cain as well as the screenplay for the 1944 film by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler.
2011 stage play
A stage adaptation by David Pichette and R. Hamilton Wright, directed by Kurt Beattie, opened at ACT Theatre in Seattle on October 27, 2011.[23] The same production moved to the San Jose Repertory Theatre and opened on January 18, 2012.
