A hard-boiled novelist and short story writer in the Dashiell Hammett mode, James M. Cain is best known for films which were based on his works, but on which he did not act as screenwriter.Cain did write the screenplays for "Stand Up and Fight" (1939) and "Gypsy Wildcat" (1944), but like Dorothy Parker and F Scott Fitzgerald, did not adapt well to the rigors of screenwriting. More than a dozen films have been made from Cain's novels and stories, several of which have become classics of the film noir genre. The first, "Double Indemnity" (1944), starred Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray as a
