Hugo Haas (1901-1968) is acknowledged as the master of bad 'bad girl' flicks. Born in Czechoslovakia, Haas had been a respected character actor in his homeland before being forced to flee after the Nazis invaded his country. He made his way to the U.S. where he began working as an announcer on broadcasts to occupied Eastern Europe. After the war, he tried to resurrect his acting career but found himself all too frequently typecast as a foreign villain. Nonetheless, acting eanbled Haas to finance his first love, filmmaking. In the 1950s, he began churning out his own independent films, which he both starred in and directed. His sensational bad girl flicks followed the typical 'B' movie model. All his plots unfolded with the same general storyline: a lonely, middle-aged man (played by Haas) is seduced by a sexy blonde with a bad reputation. Pickup was just one in a long line of similar films. Due to a fatally provocative tagline, "They gave her a bad name and she lived up to it!", the American poster for Pickup was withdrawn from circulation, and replaced by another with the same image, but the tamer tagline.. "Easy to pick-up".