A very free adaptation of Ben Hecht's outrageous memoir of his time as a cub reporter in Chicago during the early twentieth century. The most shocking change, to any Hecht devotee, is that Hecht himself is eliminated from the story - the hero, "Ben Harvey", is an extremely naive innocent from the country at large in the big city, rather than the tough, savvy and resolutely unshockable city kid Hecht actually was.
Producer Walter Mirisch originally planned for Ava Gardner to play the part of the brothel madame.
This was originally going to be produced by Cleopatra (1963)'s Walter Wanger in 1964.