In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #65 Greatest Movie of All Time.
Lux Soap sponsored a radio broadcast version of the script. Humphrey Bogart reprised his Oscar-winning role as Charlie and Greer Garson played Rosie. The broadcast is included in the DVD commemorative edition and also features a commercial for Lux starring Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Shortly after filming was completed, Belgian fan magazine Cine-Revue published an article allegedly written by Lauren Bacall, who had accompanied her husband, Humphrey Bogart, on location, which included behind-the-scenes photographs. According to a Mar 1952 Daily Variety story, Romulus Films protested the publication of the photos, which they said "dispelled the film's illusion" by exposing private shooting information. Lauren Bacall denied having written the story.
Sources claimed that everyone in the cast and crew got sick, except Humphrey Bogart and John Huston, who said they avoided illness by essentially living on imported Scotch. Bogart later said, "All I ate was baked beans, canned asparagus, and Scotch whiskey. Whenever a fly bit Huston or me, it dropped dead."
The female lead was originally offered to Bette Davis in 1938, with David Niven as Charlie. It was offered to Davis again in 1947, with James Mason, as Charlie, but she had to drop out due to pregnancy. By the time Davis tried out for the role again in 1949, plans were underway for Katharine Hepburn to star.
The Queen of Africa was played by the LS Livingston, which had been a working steamboat for 40 years. It is now docked next to the Holiday Inn in Key Largo, Florida, just off US Highway 1.
The scenes in the reed-filled riverbank were filmed in Dalyan, Turkey.
The ship "Königin Luise" in the script (called "Louisa" by the English-speaking characters, but by its full name by the German crew) was inspired by the "Liemba", initially a German gunboat steaming (and controlling) the Tanganyika lake. Originally it was called the "Graf Goetzen". The ship, almost 70 meters long, had been built at the Meyer Shipyard in Germany (now maker of some of the world's largest cruise ships), but assembled on-site. The "Graf Goetzen" was sunk in June 1916 by its own crew to avoid capture, then raised by the Belgians, sunk again in a 1920 storm and was raised once more by the British in 1927, who renamed it "Liemba". It is still in service on Lake Tanganyika. The ship actually used in the film was the steam-tug Buganda, which was operating on Lake Victoria.
This is the role that won Humphrey Bogart the only Oscar of his career.
To show her disgust with the amount of alcohol that John Huston and Humphrey Bogart consumed during filming, Katharine Hepburn drank only water. As a result, she suffered a severe bout of dysentery.
While filming the scene where Charlie finds his body covered with leeches, Humphrey Bogart insisted on using rubber leeches. John Huston refused, and brought a leech-breeder to the London studio with a tank full of them. It made Bogart queasy and nervous, qualities Huston wanted for his close-ups. Ultimately, rubber leeches were placed on Bogart, and a close-up of a real leech was shot on the breeder's chest.