Trivia

Orson Welles often said that making this film was the most sheer fun he had ever had working in the cinema.

While the latter portion of the plot revolves around the diamond necklace, the real history is different. In 1772, the infatuated Louis XV requested that Parisian jewelers Boehmer & Bassenge create an elaborate and spectacular jeweled necklace for Du Barry, one that would surpass all known others in grandeur, at an estimated cost of two-million livres. The necklace, still not completed nor paid for when Louis XV died, would eventually trigger a scandal involving Jeanne de la Motte-Valois, in which Queen Marie Antoinette would be wrongly accused of bribing the Cardinal de Rohan, Archbishop of Strasbourg in the Alsace, to purchase it for her, accusations which would figure prominently in the onset of the French Revolution.

Superman #62 (Jan-Feb 1950) has a story in which Orson Welles is kidnapped by Martians while making this film. Nancy Guild is also in this story.

Orson Welles would star with and direct Akim Tamiroff many times after this picture, most famously in "Touch of Evil".

Initially, the film was to be directed in the USA by Douglas Sirk and was to star George Sanders.