When John Gar?eld and Lana Turner lay eyes on each other in Tay Garnett’s adaptation of James M. Cain’s novel about a crime of passion, the audience is immediately alerted to the sexual chemistry between the pair that will lead inexorably to the murder of Turner’s husband. For Censor Richard Hayes, ‘it was the usual triangle’, but ‘without a relieving feature.’ His view of this ‘base, sordid picture’ was endorsed by the Appeal Board, and it was not until 1962 that this classic American noir was resubmitted. Even then, Censor Liam O’Hora reported that he had to be ‘particularly careful’, and he sought to suppress the intensity of the passionate relationship between the two leads.