In 1952, at the height of The Cold War, those "take cover" drills, the Joseph McCarthy Hearings and the aftermath of the 1951 Rosenberg Trials, this picture featured John Wayne , in real life a staunch anti-communist, portraying an American pilot in love with a defecting Russian spy. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were accused of being spies for The Soviet Union and later found guilty and executed, in 1953, for conspiracy to commit espionage. The film was put on the shelf until 1957. By that time, RKO was under new ownership, Howard Hughes had departed and Joseph McCarthy had been severely discredited, for many of his earlier activities, by The 1954 "Army McCarthy Hearings".