In 1938 Hans Sahl wrote a film script entitled 1000 Dollar Belohnung! while in France. It was a romantic comedy with Cinderella elements - the heroine is trying to find the person who saved her life from a jacket left behind at the scene of an accident. Sahl sent the idea to the director Fritz Lang in Hollywood. He had not always reviewed Lang's films favourably as a film critic. Following the release of Frau im Mond (1929), for example, he referred to the writing team of Fritz Lang/Thea von Harbou as a "facade with little behind it".

In his accompanying letter Sahl evidently wrote that he had changed his mind about the director's work. He succeeded in getting Lang to arrange an English translation and tomake enquiries for him - however, the filmmaker, who also enjoyed success in the US, could not resist commenting on their relationship. In a letter to Lang on 18 August 1937, he wrote: "But if you are now claiming that 'the Lang case' is one of the positive surprises of recent years, this inevitably gives rise to a suspicion that the Berlin critics were perhaps a little out of their depth with such an ominous case. But, believe me, I have not changed my mind at all."

A few months later, on 26 January 1938, Lang wrote again: It is impossible to make use of new material, cuts are being made everywhere and so the rejection is therefore not a "negative value judgement", "but down to the predicament of the studios". When he was in the USA himself, Sahl wrote a new, Americanised version titled "Dora Lee". It was never filmed, although​Twentieth Century Fox bought the idea.