The film is based on the play of the same name by Langdon Mitchell, which in turn is based on William Makepeace Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair. The play was made famous in the late 1890s by actress Minnie Maddern Fiske. The screenplay was written by Francis Edward Faragoh. The film was considered a landmark in cinema as the first film to use the newly developed three-strip Technicolor production, opening the way for a growing number of color films to be made in Britain and the United States in the years leading up to World War II.
The film recounts the tale of a lower-class girl who insinuates herself into an upper-class family, only to see her life and the lives of those around her destroyed.
Becky Sharp is the anti-heroine of William Makepeace Thackeray's satirical novel Vanity Fair (1847–48). A cynical social climber who uses her charms to fascinate and seduce upper-class men, Sharp is contrasted with the clinging, dependent heroine Amelia Sedley. She befriends Amelia at an expensive girls school where she is given a place because Becky's father teaches there, and uses her as a stepping stone to gain social position. Sharp functions as a picara— a picaresque heroine — or by being a social outsider who is able to expose the manners of the upper gentry to ridicule.
17 by Becky's mother, Lorena, who also lived at the home on Rancho VillaRoad. Becky was treated by paramedics at the house and brought to SharpHospital, where she was pronounced dead roughly 15 minutes later.