In her autobiography, "The Shocking Miss Pilgrim A Writer in Early Hollywood",
Frederica Sagor claims that the original screenplay for this film was written by her husband,
Ernest Maas. The story - of a man who abandons his family - was loosely based on Ernest's own father, who had an affair with his sister-in-law and destroyed two families in the process. As a fellow German-American, and working in the nascent film industry, Ernest knew
Emil Jannings personally and gave him a copy of the original screenplay. Later, he learned that Jannings had taken it to another director (and studio) and they'd stolen it; this was common in the early film industry.
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