Howard Hawks allegedly bought Elsa Martinelli's tight fitting safari suits himself at a New York department store.
Howard Hawks appears in at least two scenes in the movie. The first appearance is in the back of the truck when they are chasing the Rhino toward the end of the movie. He is standing on the right wearing a hat and mostly looking down/back. The second appearance is when they are standing listening to Pockets read the letter from Dallas. He walks through the hall behind the scene.
Red Buttons, a liberal Democrat, later said that he greatly regretted his "gross misapprehension" line.
According to director Howard Hawks, all the animal captures in the picture were performed by the actual actors; no stuntmen or animal handlers were substituted onscreen. The rhino really did escape, and the actors really did have to recapture it - and Hawks included the sequence for its realism.
According to Hardy Krüger's autobiography, the film crew rented all vehicles available in Tanzania, even the privately owned ones.
Composer Henry Mancini wrote a brief piece of incidental music to go with a scene where a baby elephant is taken for a walk. The simple little song became an international hit as "Baby Elephant Walk", and has been recorded by a large number of artists and in many different styles.
Congo, the baby elephant in the filming, died in November 2000 at the Dubbo Zoo. He was the only male elephant in captivity in Australia at the time.
Hatari means "danger" in Swahili.
In 1960 Clark Gable had agreed to star in the movie with John Wayne, provided he received first billing on the opening credits and $1 million plus 10% of the gross. Paramount however would not raise the budget to finance Gable, so the script was radically changed.
Jan Oelofse, the animal supervisor, captured and tamed all the animals in Africa; the elephants, leopard, the cheetahs, and flew with 40 animals aboard a DC6 across Africa, through South America to Hollywood to continue scenes shot in Hollywood
Little Wolf was a chief of the Cheyenne tribe in 1878. He, and another chief, led the Cheyenne off their Oklahoma reservation and took them back to their homeland in Montana. This despite hundreds of U.S. Cavalry who tried to stop them. This was called the "Cheyenne Autumn Trail" and is the basis for the movie Cheyenne Autumn.
Many critics carped that the film seemed like a lazy vacation for Hawks. They were partly right - there was no finished script and Hawks relished the chance of filming what he wanted on location in Tanganyika--now Tanzania--far away from the watchful eye of the studio, happily burning through their $6 million budget.
Much of the action sequence audio had to be re-dubbed due to John Wayne's cursing while wrestling with the animals.
Howard Hawks:
He appears in at least two scenes in the movie: The first appearance is in the back of the truck when they are chasing the Rhino toward the end of the movie. He is standing on the right wearing a hat and mostly looking down/back. The second appearance is when they are standing listening to Pockets read the letter from Dallas. He walks through the hall behind the scene.