Marlon Brando would sit near the ocean for hours waiting for the waves to become more dramatic for his perfect shots.
Marlon Brando's first cut of the film was allegedly five hours long. He was reportedly unhappy with the final product, despite its box-office success. "Now, it's a good picture for them Paramount," he said upon its release, "but it's not the picture I made . . . now the characters in the film are black-and-white, not gray-and-human as I planned them."
Marlon Brando's inexperience behind the camera was obvious on set. He shot six times the amount of footage normally used for a film at the time. He was indecisive and ran extremely overlong in getting the film finished. Paramount eventually took the film away from him and recut it.
Marlon Brando's original cut of the movie was over five hours long.
Stanley Kubrick, who originally was slated to direct the film, wanted Spencer Tracy to play Sheriff Dad Longworth. Marlon Brando, whose production company already had Karl Malden on salary, refused to replace him with Tracy.
After buying the rights to the novel, producer Frank P. Rosenberg worked on the first draft of the script together with Rod Serling. Sam Peckinpah was then hired to rewrite it. A complex deal was then made where money earlier spent attempting to develop Louis L'Amour's novel "To Tame a Land" into a film was allocated for accounting purposes to this film, and Stanley Kubrick was hired as director. Kubrick fired Peckinpah and brought in Calder Willingham for more rewriting, but later Rosenberg fired him and hired Guy Trosper instead.
Paramount's last release in VistaVision.
The character of Louisa, played by Pina Pellicer, was shot in the back and killed by a stray bullet fired at Rio by the dying Sheriff Dad Longworth in Marlon Brando's original cut of the film. Paramount substituted a different, upbeat ending that appears in the film.
The character of Rio originally was based on Billy the Kid, as recounted in Charles Neider's novel "The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones." Sam Peckinpah, who wrote an early version of the script and who later went on to direct Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, said in a 1973 "Playboy" magazine interview that Marlon Brando would not play a villain, and Billy the Kid most definitely was a villain. Peckinpah's 1973 film shares some narrative elements with this film and it also featured "Jacks" co-stars Slim Pickens and Katy Jurado.