Leave Her to Heaven
In May 1944, Twentieth Century Fox executive Darryl F. Zanuck purchased the rights to Ben Ames Williams then-unpublished novel, "Leave Her to Heaven", planning a screen adaptation. The studio spent an exorbitant $100,000 to acquire the rights to Ames' novel, which was published the following month in June 1944. The title of the film and its source novel is derived from William Shakespeare's "Hamlet": In Act I, Scene V, the Ghost urges Hamlet not to seek vengeance against Queen Gertrude, but rather to "leave her to heaven, and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge to prick and sting her."