Phyllis Dietrichson is a fictional character in the two film adaptations of James M. Cain's

James M. Cain

James Mallahan Cain was an American author and journalist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labeling, he is usually associated with the hardboiled school of American crime fiction and seen as one of the creators of the roman noir...

 novella

Novella

A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

 Double Indemnity

Double Indemnity (novel)

Double Indemnity is a highly influential 1943 crime novel, written by American journalist-turned-novelist James M. Cain. The book was first published in serial form for Liberty magazine in 1936. Following that, Double Indemnity appeared as a one of "three long short tales" in the collection Three...

. In the 1944 production, she was played by Barbara Stanwyck

Barbara Stanwyck

Barbara Stanwyck was an American actress. She was a film and television star, known during her 60-year career as a consummate and versatile professional with a strong screen presence, and a favorite of directors including Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang and Frank Capra...

; in the 1973 made-for-TV remake, by Samantha Eggar

Samantha Eggar

Samantha Eggar is an English film, television and voice actress.-Early life:She was born Victoria Louise Samantha Marie Elizabeth Therese Eggar in Hampstead, London to an Anglo-Irish father and a mother of Dutch and Portuguese descent...

.

In both the novella and films, she convinces her insurance

Insurance

In law and economics, insurance is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for payment. An insurer is a company selling the...

 agent, Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray

Fred MacMurray

Frederick Martin "Fred" MacMurray was an American actor who appeared in more than 100 movies and a successful television series during a career that spanned nearly a half-century, from 1930 to the 1970s....

) to help her murder

Murder

Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...

 her husband. They make it appear that he fell off the back of a train by accident. This is done after they trick him into taking out a life insurance

Life insurance

Life insurance is a contract between an insurance policy holder and an insurer, where the insurer promises to pay a designated beneficiary a sum of money upon the death of the insured person. Depending on the contract, other events such as terminal illness or critical illness may also trigger...

 policy with a double indemnity clause, then murder him. The aim is to collect twice as much as normal from the insurance company.

The Dietrichson character was so iniquitous that Stanwyck, director Billy Wilder's

Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...

 first choice for the role, was reluctant to take it. Wilder was persistent, Stanwyck relented, and she said thereafter it was one of the best roles she'd ever played.

Details

• The character was based upon real-life murderer Ruth Snyder
  Ruth Snyder
  Ruth Brown Snyder was an American murderess. Her execution, in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison, for the murder of her husband, Albert, was captured in a well-known photograph.-The crime:...
  
  . The photo of Snyder's execution in the Sing Sing electric chair
  Electric chair
  Execution by electrocution, usually performed using an electric chair, is an execution method originating in the United States in which the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes placed on the body...
  
  , run on the cover of the January 13, 1928 New York Daily News
  New York Daily News
  The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....
  
  with the one-word headline DEAD!, has been called the most famous newsphoto of the 1920s.

• The character was ranked as the #8 film villain of the first 100 years of American cinema by the American Film Institute
  American Film Institute
  The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
  
   in the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains
  AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains
  AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains is a list of the 100 greatest screen characters chosen by American Film Institute in June 2003. It is part of the AFI 100 Years… series. The series was first presented in a CBS special hosted by Arnold Schwarzenegger...
  
  .

• In the novella, the character was named Phyllis Nerdlinger, which was changed by the screenwriters, who thought it too comical.