Raft wanted to appear in Universal's film version of the musical Broadway (1942), but Jack Warner refused to loan him, so Raft spent eight months on suspension without pay. However, Warner Bros. could only maintain the suspension while making films that Raft declined, and the studio eventually ran out of such films, forcing them to resume paying him, and they eventually agreed to let him make Broadway, playing a fictionalized version of himself as a young dancer named George Raft.
