While filming, Gregory Peck decided to become a cowboy in real-life, so he purchased a vast working ranch near Santa Barbara, California, already stocked with six hundred head of prize cattle.
Gregory Peck stated that the movie was written as an attack on McCarthyism, which he strongly opposed.
This film is notable for including a rare serious role for Joe DeRita who, around the time the film was released, became "Curly Joe" of the Three Stooges.
Screenwriter Philip Yordan said, many years later, that he was disappointed by this well-known western, claiming that Henry King was getting too old to direct major movies by this time.