Ayn Rand only agreed to make her book into a movie if the director promised that everything she wrote would make it into the final product.
Ayn Rand wanted Clifton Webb to play the villain, but studio chiefs nixed the idea and Robert Douglas was cast instead.
Ayn Rand was furious when she heard that Howard Roark's speech at the trial was being trimmed, chiefly because it was considered long, rambling and confusing, especially to Gary Cooper who didn't understand it. She got the studio to make sure that the speech was untouched and in its entirety in the finished product.
According to Barbara Branden's biography, Ayn Rand was furious when the courtroom speech was edited without her approval and refused to ever work with Warner Bros. in the future.
Hoping this film would make her a star, Warner Bros cast a relative unknown, 22-year-old Patricia Neal, after considering and then rejecting Bette Davis, Ida Lupino and Barbara Stanwyck for the female lead.
It only took 59 days to shoot the movie.
Roark (Gary Cooper)'s courtroom speech was the longest in film history up until that time.
Shot in early 1948 but not released until mid-1949.
The film's failure was largely attributed to Gary Cooper, who at 47 was much older than his twenty-something character and was considered by many critics to be unconvincing playing a man with high ideals.
The original novel was a favorite among America's armed forces, during World War II. The lengthy book helped pass the time when things were slow, and it provided inspiration to the troops, to survive the war and build their own dreams after they got home.