The MGM film was shot on location in Boston and Cape Cod; according to one critic, it was "the first commercial feature to be predominantly shot" on location in Boston. Also featured are Harvard Medical School in Roxbury, Massachusetts and Harvard University in nearby Cambridge. According to Frances Glessner Lee biographer Bruce Goldfarb, the story of the death of Irene Perry, in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, in 1940, as suggested by Glessner Lee (creator of The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death), was the basis of the film. The story earned Leonard Spigelgass a nomination as Best Story for the 23rd Academy Awards.