Trivia / It Can't Happen Here

• What Could Have Been: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer purchased the film rights to the novel shortly after its publication in 1935. Sidney Howard penned a screenplay, J. Walter Ruben was hired to direct, and Lionel Barrymore, Walter Connolly, Virginia Bruce, and Basil Rathbone were tapped for the starring cast. However, the project was put on hold due to concerns that its antifascist content would make it unsalable in Nazi Germany, which was a major market for American media. The script was picked up again at the end of 1938 after Charlie Chaplin announced plans for The Great Dictator, by which point anti-Nazi material had become more acceptable to Hollywood. Just two months before the outbreak of World War II in late 1939, the film was shelved for good.

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