 Albert Bassermann, who plays Van Meer, was German and did not speak English, so he had to learn all his lines phonetically.Likewise, one supposedly Dutch girl in the film speaks Dutch phonetically, though less convincingly.Producer Walter Wanger bought the rights to journalist Vincent Sheean's memoir "Personal History" in 1935, but after several adaptations proved unsatisfactory, Wanger allowed the story to stray significantly from the book.