She had emigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union five years earlier. Prior to starting "Red Pawn", she had worked as a junior screenwriter for Cecil B. DeMille, but by 1931 she was working in the wardrobe department at RKO Studios. She had been writing her debut novel, "We the Living", but took a break to write the screenplay in hopes of earning enough money to allow her to write full-time. She sold the screenplay and the synopsis to Universal Pictures in 1932 for $1,500, her first professional sale. The studio postponed the filming of the screenplay several times, and with Hollywood entering its Red Decade, the anti-Soviet themes of the film made it unattractive to filmmakers. Universal later traded the property to Paramount, which has held onto the rights since, although "Red Pawn" has never been filmed. Professor of literature at Anderson College Jena Trammell has cited "Red Pawn" as a crucial point in Rand's career and in the development of her aesthetic philosophy, romantic realism. "We the Living", finally published in 1936, shares some basic plotlines with "Red Pawn". Both feature a love triangle set against the background of the early Soviet Union, with the woman protagonist having an anti-Communist lover and a Communist one, and with the Communist finally compromising or renouncing his ideological allegiance for love of her.