John Wayne criticized what he perceived to be a "lack of patriotism" of this film, saying "How they got Gary Cooper to do that one, to me, at least, it simply degrades the Medal of Honor. The whole story makes a mockery of America's highest award for valor, the whole premise of the story was wrong, illogical because they don't pick the type of men the movie picked to win the award, and that can be proved by the very history of the award."
Gary Cooper was very ill during production, and was actually filming against the advice of his doctors.
Dick York suffered a back injury during the filming of this movie and never fully recovered from it. Continuing back problems forced him off of the TV show Bewitched in 1969 and effectively ended his career. He spent his last years in poverty.
Average Shot Length = 10 seconds. Median Shot Length = 10.4 seconds.
Besides looking far too old for his character, Gary Cooper was actually quite ill during shooting, and participated in this film against the advice of his doctors. Towards the end of the film he was dragged 100 yards along the ground by a railroad handcar, something film critic Stanley Kauffmann complained about in an issue in the magazine New Republic.
Due to restrictions of the Production Code implemented by the Hays Office, Maj. Thorn's homosexuality could only be implied in the movie and not stated outright.
During filming Gary Cooper arranged for his daughter to "date" gay actor Tab Hunter. He had previously arranged for her to "date" gay actor Anthony Perkins while they were filming Friendly Persuasion, a film he hated.
Film debut of Michael Callan.
In a 1960 interview John Wayne criticized this film and Montgomery Clift's Suddenly, Last Summer, both of which treated homosexuality (in this film because of an implied homosexual relationship between the characters played by Gary Cooper and Tab Hunter), as "poison polluting Hollywood's moral bloodstream." The latter, he said, was "too disgusting even for discussion."