Barbara Stanwyck had one of her best roles as Phyllis Dietrichson, a scheming woman who uses her charms to inveigle an insurance agent (Fred MacMurray) into helping her kill her husband. Edward G. Robinson plays an investigator who doubts that Mr. Dietrichson's sudden passing was strictly an accident. Billy Wilder's (The Lost Weekend, The Apartment, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot) adaptation of James M. Cain's book is peerless film noir. Referring to his leading lady decades later, Wilder, who worked with some of Hollywood's greatest actors, minced no words about Stanwyck: "She was the best."