In the winter of 1937, Josef von Sternberg was in Vienna assembling the cast for the film version of Émile Zola’s Germinal, with Hilde Krahl tapped to play Catherine and Jean-Louis Barrault as Etienne. The Austrian financed project collapsed when Germany invaded the nation in March 1938. Sternberg, ill in London at the time, returned to his California residence to convalesce for several months.