member of the Loyalist Army who has returned from  the Spanish Civil War. For the film version, the time period and the  setting were changed. Director John Huston (I) (qv) and  screenwriter Richard Brooks (I) (qv) rewrote the main character,  Frank McCloud, making him a World War II veteran who had served in  the Italian campaign. The two writers emphasized the idealism of the  early Roosevelt years and how those ideals began to erode as  organized crime spread through urban areas.