According to Kenneth L. Geist's biography of the film's director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, "People Will Talk", the film's producer Sol Siegel hired Philip Yordan to adapt Joseph Weidman's novel for the screen. After Yordan submitted three-quarters of the script, Siegel, finding the script unacceptable, fired him and asked Mankiewicz to redo the script. Mankiewicz rewrote all of Yordan's dialogue, reshaped the script and finished it. The Screen Writers Guild ruled that Yordan receive sole story credit and that Yordan and Mankiewicz share credit for the screenplay. Mankiewicz refused to share credit for a screenplay he had basically written and so received no credit. The studio remade House of Strangers as a western in 1954 as Broken Lance and Yordan was given credit for the story and won an Academy Award for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story.
The character played by Edward G. Robinson is loosely based on Amadeo P. Giannini (1870-1949), founder of the Bank of Italy, which became the Bank of America.
The first of three movies written by screenwriter Philip Yordan, based on the novel, "I'll Never Go Home Again," by Jerome Weidman. The other two were Broken Lance (1954), with Spencer Tracy (for which Yordan won an Oscar for Best Story), and The Big Show (1961) with Esther Williams and Cliff Robertson.
"The Screen Guild Theater" broadcast a 60 minute radio adaptation of the movie on January 25, 1951 with Edward G. Robinson reprising his film role.
According to contemporary articles in the March 1948 entertainment press, Victor Mature was to be cast in the lead.