David O. Selznick bought the rights of the book in 1939. He intended on casting either Joan Fontaine or Vivien Leigh in the female leads and Leslie Howard or Laurence Olivier in the male leads.
Angela Lansbury then twenty-two wanted the sympathetic role of the waif-like village girl Effie but was forced to play Mabel the thirty-five year old shrewish wife of fifty year old Walter Pidgeon. This brought home to Lansbury that she would never be a star player at MGM. The role of Effie went to Janet Leigh who would be Lansbury's co-star in The Manchurian Candidate where Lansbury would again play an older unsympathetic woman although this role - Mrs. Iselin - would be cited by Lansbury as her favorite film role.