"Lux Radio Theater" broadcast a 60 minute radio adaptation of the movie on
April 29, 1946 with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer reprising their film roles.
"The Screen Guild Theater" broadcast a 30 minute radio adaptation of the movie on February 3, 1947 with Charles Boyer reprising his film role.
Charles Boyer's contract stipulated top billing. When David O. Selznick heard this (Ingrid Bergman was under contract to him at the time), he refused to loan MGM Bergman's services. It was only after much pleading from Bergman, who was very keen to work with Boyer, that Selznick finally relented.
Ingrid Bergman spent some time in a mental institution to research her role, studying a woman who had suffered a nervous breakdown.
Angela Lansbury was only 17 when she made this, her film debut. She had been working at Bullocks Department Store in Los Angeles and when she told her boss that she was leaving, he offered to match the pay at her new job. Expecting it to be in the region of her Bullocks salary of the equivalent of $27 a week, he was somewhat taken aback when she told him she would be earning $500 a week.
In MGM's script, Charles Boyer was supposed to have told Ingrid Bergman at the end that he had loved her all along. This was an addition to the play made by the screenwriter. David O. Selznick, when reading over the script, was horrified and promptly sent MGM one of his famous long and involved memos, this one ordering the studio to omit the line, which it did.
New scenes not in the original play were added to this version of "Gaslight", and the names of most of the characters were changed. The character that Joseph Cotten plays in this version was changed from a stout, humorously sardonic elderly man to a young, handsome one in order to serve as a potential love interest for Ingrid Bergman in the film, and in order to appeal more to the audience.
The aria that Ingrid Bergman is singing when we see her in the first scene of her in the present day is from the Gaetano Donizetti opera "Lucia Di Lammermoor". The opera is famous for its so-called "mad scene", in which the eponymous Lucia goes insane.
The first time Ingrid Bergman met Charles Boyer was the day they shot the scene where they meet at a train station and kiss passionately. As Boyer was several inches shorter than his co-star, he had to stand on a box, which she kept inadvertently kicking as she ran into the scene.
The original Broadway stage play and source for the screen play was "Angel Street" by Patrick Hamilton which opened at the John Golden Theater on December 5, 1941 and ran for 1295 performances. The original stage cast included Leo G. Carroll, Vincent Price, and Judith Evelyn.
The sets are deliberately overfilled with bric-a-brac to emphasize Paula's increasing sense of claustrophobia.
When this film was produced, the studio attempted to have all prints of the previous version, Gaslight destroyed. These efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, though the film was rarely seen for the next few decades.