An adaptation of Ernst Lothar's novel “The Mills of the Gods,” starring Fredric March as the stern, upright, rather merciless judge who poisons his wife (Florence Eldridge) when he learns she is suffering from an incurable disease, An Act of Murder was attacked by the Catholic Church and by conservative civic groups for focusing on the very sensitive subject of euthanasia. Universal attempted to release it under various titles - An Act of Murder, I Stand Accused, and Live Today for Tomorrow - and finally more or less shelved it. In England it was hailed by Maurice Speed's Film Review as “strong, sombre, sometimes harrowing but adult, intelligent and finely acted.”