Quotes
 Barton Keyes: Eh? There it is, Walter. It`s beginning to become a part of the seams already. Murder`s never perfect. Always comes apart sooner or later, and when two people are involved it`s usually sooner. Now we know the Dietrichson name is in it *and* a somebody else. Pretty soon, we`ll know who that somebody is. He`ll show. He`s got to show. Sometime, somewhere, they`ve got to meet. They`re emotions are all kicked up. Whether it`s love or hate doesn`t matter; they can`t keep away from each toher. They may think it`s twice as safe because there`s two of them,
[chuckles]
Barton Keyes: but it isn`t twice as safe. It`s ten times twice as dangerous. They`ve committed a *murder*! And it`s not like taking a trolley ride together where they can get off at different stops. They`re stuck with each other and they got to ride all the way to the end of the line and it`s a one-way trip and the last stop is the cemetery. She put in her claim... and I`m gonna throw it right back at her.
[Keyes fumbles through his pockets for a light]
Barton Keyes: [Walter Neff reaches into his pocket and gives Keyes a light]
Barton Keyes: Let her sue us if she dares. I`ll be ready for her *and* that somebody else. They`ll be digging their own graves. Walter Neff: That`s a honey of an anklet you`re wearing, Mrs. Dietrichson.
Walter Neff: What do the police figure?
Barton Keyes: That he got tangled up in his crutches and fell off the train. They`re satisfied. It`s not their dough.
Walter Neff: I get the general idea. She was a tramp from a long line of tramps.
Barton Keyes: The job I`m talking about takes brains and integrity. It takes more guts than there is in 50 salesmen. It`s the hottest job in the business... Desk job? Is that all you can see in it? Just a hard chair to park your pants on from 9 to 5, huh? Just a pile of papers to shuffle around and five sharp pencils and a scratch pad to make figures on. Maybe a little doodling on the side. Well, that`s not the way I look at it, Walter. To me, a claims man is a surgeon. That desk is an operating table. And those pencils are scalpels and bone chisels. And those papers are not just forms and statistics and claims for compensation, they`re alive, they`re packed with drama, with twisted hopes and crooked dreams. A claims man, Walter, is a doctor and a bloodhound... and a cop and a judge and a jury and a father confessor all in one. And you want to tell me you`re not interested. You don`t want to work with your brains. All you wanna work is with your finger on the doorbell, for a few bucks more a week.
Barton Keyes: Well, I get darn sick of tryin` to pick up after a gang of fast-talking salesmen dumb enough to sell life insurance to a guy who sleeps in the same bed with four rattlesnakes.
Phyllis: Do you make your own breakfast, Mr Neff?
Walter Neff: Well, I squeeze a grapefruit now and again.
Barton Keyes: What`s the matter? Dames chasing you again? Or still? Or is it none of my business?
Walter Neff: If I told you it was a customer, you`d...
Barton Keyes: "Margie"! I bet she drinks from the bottle.
Barton Keyes: Walter, you`re all washed up.
Edward S. Norton: That witness from the train, what was his name?
Barton Keyes: His name was Jackson. Probably still is.
Phyllis: I think you`re rotten.
Walter Neff: I think you`re swell - so long as I`m not your husband.
Phyllis: Get out of here.
Walter Neff: You bet I`ll get out of here, baby. I`ll get out of here but quick.
Barton Keyes: Now that`s enough out of you, Walter. Now get outta here before I throw my desk at you.
[looks in his pocket for a match]
Walter Neff: [takes a match of his own and lights Keyes` cigar] I love you, too.
[voiceover]
Walter Neff: I really did, too, you old crab. Always yelling your head off, always sore at everybody. You never fooled me with your song and dance, not for a second. I kinda always knew that behind all the cigar ashes on your vest was a heart as big as a house.
Building attendant: Well, hello there, Mr. Neff.
Phyllis: Mr. Neff, why don`t you drop by tomorrow evening about eight-thirty. He`ll be in then.
Walter Neff: Who?
Phyllis: My husband. You were anxious to talk to him weren`t you?
Walter Neff: Yeah, I was, but I`m sort of getting over the idea, if you know what I mean.
Phyllis: There`s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour.
Walter Neff: How fast was I going, officer?
Phyllis: I`d say around ninety.
Walter Neff: Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket.
Phyllis: Suppose I let you off with a warning this time.
Walter Neff: Suppose it doesn`t take.
Phyllis: Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles.
Walter Neff: Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder.
Phyllis: Suppose you try putting it on my husband`s shoulder.
Walter Neff: That tears it.
Phyllis: We`re both rotten.
Walter Neff: Only you`re a little more rotten.
Phyllis: I`m a native Californian. Born right here in Los Angeles.
Walter Neff: They say all native Californians come from Iowa.
Walter Neff: Who`d you think I was anyway? The guy that walks into a good looking dame`s front parlour and says, "Good afternoon, I sell accident insurance on husbands... you got one that`s been around too long? One you`d like to turn into a little hard cash?"
Jackson: These are fine cigars you smoke.
Barton Keyes: Two for a quarter.
Jackson: That`s what I said.
Edward S. Norton: Mister Keyes, I was RAISED in the insurance business.
Barton Keyes: Yeah, in the front office. Come now, you`ve never read an actuarial table in your life, have you? Why they`ve got ten volumes on suicide alone. Suicide by race, by color, by occupation, by sex, by seasons of the year, by time of day. Suicide, how committed: by poison, by firearms, by drowning, by leaps. Suicide by poison, subdivided by *types* of poison, such as corrosive, irritant, systemic, gaseous, narcotic, alkaloid, protein, and so forth; suicide by leaps, subdivided by leaps from high places, under the wheels of trains, under the wheels of trucks, under the feet of horses, from *steamboats*. But, Mr. Norton, of all the cases on record, there`s not one single case of suicide by leap from the rear end of a moving train. And you know how fast that train was going at the point where the body was found? Fifteen miles an hour. Now how can anybody jump off a slow-moving train like that with any kind of expectation that he would kill himself? No. No soap, Mr. Norton. We`re sunk, and we`ll have to pay through the nose, and you know it.
Barton Keyes: You know, you, uh, oughta take a look at the statistics on suicide some time. You might learn a little something about the insurance business.
Barton Keyes: I picked you for the job, not because I think you`re so darn smart, but because I thought you were a shade less dumb than the rest of the outfit. Guess I was wrong. You`re not smarter, Walter... you`re just a little taller.
Phyllis: I was just fixing some ice tea; would you like a glass?
Walter Neff: Yeah, unless you got a bottle of beer that`s not working.
Walter Neff: Yes, I killed him. I killed him for money - and a woman - and I didn`t get the money and I didn`t get the woman. Pretty, isn`t it?
Walter Neff: Suddenly it came over me that everything would go wrong. It sounds crazy, Keyes, but it`s true, so help me. I couldn`t hear my own footsteps. It was the walk of a dead man.
Walter Neff: How could I have known that murder could sometimes smell like honeysuckle?
Walter Neff: Do I laugh now, or wait `til it gets funny?
Barton Keyes: Have you made up your mind?
Jackson: Mr. Keyes, I`m a Medford man - Medford, Oregon. Up in Medford, we take our time making up our minds.
Barton Keyes: Well, we`re not in Medford, we`re in a hurry.
Walter Neff: It`s just like the first time I came here, isn`t it? We were talking about automobile insurance, only you were thinking about murder. And I was thinking about that anklet.
Walter Neff: Know why you couldn`t figure this one, Keyes? I`ll tell ya. `Cause the guy you were looking for was too close. Right across the desk from ya.
Barton Keyes: Closer than that, Walter.
Walter Neff: I love you, too.
Walter Neff: You`ll be here too?
Phyllis: I guess so, I usually am.
Walter Neff: Same chair, same perfume, same anklet?
Phyllis: I wonder if I know what you mean.
Walter Neff: I wonder if you wonder.
Trivia
The character Walter Neff was originally named Walter Ness, but director/writer Billy Wilder found out that there was a man living in Beverly Hills named Walter Ness who was actually an insurance salesman. To avoid being sued for defamation of character, they changed the name.
The scene where Neff and Dietrichson can`t get their car started after the murder was added by Wilder after his car wouldn`t start at the end of a shooting day.
Dick Powell wanted the role of Walter Neff, but he was under contract to another studio and they wouldn`t allow it. He was enraged and tore up his contract. The role went to Fred MacMurray.
The blonde wig that Barbara Stanwyck is wearing throughout the movie was the idea of Billy Wilder. A month into shooting Wilder suddenly realized how bad it looked, but by then it was too late to re-shoot the earlier scenes. To rationalize this mistake, in later interviews Wilder claimed that the bad-looking wig was intentional.
In the first scene in which Walter first kisses Phyllis, we see a wedding ring on Walter`s hand. Fred MacMurray was married and the ring was not noticed until post-production.
Billy Wilder had a tough time getting a leading man for this film; many actors, including George Raft turned the project down. He had to persuade Fred MacMurray to accept the part.
#
# Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler did not get along well while writing this film`s script, a process that was apparently filled with arguments. Wilder claimed that he flaunted his womanizing ability at the time to torment the sexually-repressed Chandler.
The victim, Mr. Dietrichson, is an oil company executive. Screenplay writer Raymond Chandler was an oil company executive before he became a writer.
Silver dust was mixed with some subtle smoke effects to create the illusion of waning sunlight in Phyllis Dietrichson`s house.
We never learn the first name of Mr. Dietrichson.
Various studios expressed interest in the story when it first appeared in serial form in 1935 but realized it was unfilmable within the strictures of the newly-established Production Code.
In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #29 Greatest Movie of All Time.
Author James M. Cain later admitted that if he had come up with some of the solutions to the plot that screenwriters Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler did, he would have employed them in his original novel.
The movie was based on the novel by James M. Cain, which in turn was based on the true story of Ruth Snyder, the subject of a notorious 1930s murder trial.
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# Barbara Stanwyck was the first choice to play Phyllis, but she was unnerved when seeing the role was of a ruthless killer. When she expressed her concern to Billy Wilder, he asked her, "Are you a mouse or an actress?"
On viewing the film`s rushes, production head Buddy G. DeSylva remarked of Barbara Stanwyck`s blonde wig, "We hired Barbara Stanwyck, and here we get George Washington"!
In the scene where Phyllis is listening at Neff`s door as he talks with Keyes, Keyes exits into the hallway and Phyllis hides behind the door. The door opens into the hallway which isn`t allowed by building codes even back then, but it does give Phyllis something to hide behind and increases the tension.
Raymond Chandler hated the experience of writing the script with Billy Wilder so much that he actually walked out and would not return unless a list of demands was met. The studio acceded to his demands and he returned to finish the script with Wilder, even though the two detested each other.
One of over 700 Paramount Productions, filmed between 1929 and 1949, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by Universal ever since.
In the early 1970s Paramount had plans to remake Double Indemnity (1944) with Robert Redford in the Fred MacMurray role. The project never got off the ground.
SPOILER: Director Billy Wilder originally filmed an ending where Keyes watches Walter Neff go to the gas chamber.
SPOILER: A different ending was shot, with Neff being caught by the police and executed while Keyes looks on in despair. Billy Wilder decided it would be poignant and fitting for both characters if instead Neff were to die in his office with Keyes by his side as he expressed his regret.
SPOILER: The part of Walter Neff was originally offered to George Raft. He insisted that he would only take on the role if his character turned out to be an FBI agent at the end, entrapping Barbara Stanwyck`s character. As this ran completely counter to James M. Cain`s original novel, he naturally didn`t get the part.
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Barbara Stanwyck
(as Phyllis Dietrichson)
with Fred MacMurray
(as Walter Neff)
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