According to her autobiography, lead actress Carroll Baker was concerned about the film's script early in production and requested that a new writer be hired. The front office suggested she involve herself with only "girly" concerns, such as choosing the correct handbag for each scene, then stocked her studio dressing room with dozens the next day. Baker responded by slinging them out the door one by one, and later wrote, "Sylvia turned out to be one woman who never carried a handbag."
Although Carroll Baker disdainfully recalled in her biography that she refused to carry a purse in the film because she was allegedly so fed up with the studio's focus on such trivial details as which handbag she'd be using in each scene, she does indeed carry a purse in at least one scene - in the sequence where Jane is struck by a car.
To prepare herself to play the heroine with a checkered past, Carroll Baker actually worked a shift in an all-night diner (where she went unnoticed), made change in a penny arcade booth, visited a Tijuana brothel and so forth - publicity stunt "research" that was documented in a lengthy February 27 1965 Saturday Evening Post picture story called "The Lady Was A Tramp".