Elizabeth Taylor considered herself to be miscast as Rebecca, and during filming there was talk of replacing her with Deborah Kerr, Robert Taylor's co-star from Quo Vadis.
Joan Fontaine plays the romantic lead opposite Robert Taylor in this film, which involves the return of King Richard to the throne of England and features Robin Hood as a minor character. Fourteen years earlier Fontaine's sister Olivia de Havilland played the romantic lead opposite Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood, a film set around similar events.
Released in the summer of 1952, Ivanhoe was MGM's highest grossing film for the year and one of the top four moneymakers of 1952, grossing over $6.2 million. The film had taken in $1,310,590 at the box office in thirty-nine days of limited release, setting a record for an MGM film. According to the Motion Picture Almanac, the film was the second highest-grossing film of 1952, taking in more than $7,000,000 at the box office.
Scriptwriter Marguerite Roberts was a member of the American Communist Party and in 1951 she was ordered to appear before the House of Un-American Activities Committee. Roberts and her husband John Sanford refused to name fellow members of the party and were both blacklisted. MGM received permission from the SWG (Screen Writer's Guild) to remove Roberts' name from the film after she refused to testify before HUAC.