Trivia

Producer Irving Allen was the original director, but after only three days of shooting, Charles Laughton threatened to quit if Burgess Meredith did not take over. Laughton directed the scenes in which Meredith appeared.

The first American picture to be shot wholly in color in Paris, the Ansco Color process being used to maximize the cinematic impact of the story's authentic locations.

Considered a flop on its release, it was quickly forgotten and believed to be a lost film for several decades. The film fell out of copyright and was not renewed as it was regarded as an independent production and the negative was not in the RKO archives. (RKO were the original US distributors but not the copyright owners, and the film was picked up by independent distributors in most other countries where it was screened.) However, two color prints eventually turned up, one purportedly in the 1980s and one in the possession of the estate of Burgess Meredith, who died in 1997. While neither print was in fantastic condition, they were cleaned up, and the prints shown on TV and released onto DVD are a mixture of the best-surviving elements combined from both prints. (Surviving prints reportedly were 35mm, but visual inspection of the grain in the image seems to indicate that at least one of the prints was originally 16mm and then blown up to 35mm at some point.)

The film had various production problems, including Charles Laughton's threatening to walk off the picture if the original director, Irving Allen (who was also one of the film's producers) wasn't replaced (star Burgess Meredith then took over as director). Allen himself was very dissatisfied with the final results. After its initial run, he bought the film rights back from RKO and kept the prints out of circulation for a long time. Many, including Meredith, believed that the film was lost. However, it has since been released on VHS and DVD.

According to her book "My Life in France," Julia Child and her husband Paul Child met Burgess Meredith and Franchot Tone at the restaurant Les Deux Magots, where the two were filming this movie. It would be another 12 years before Julia would begin her rise to fame.