Alan Hale Jr. plays the son of Porthos here. His father, Alan Hale, appeared in The Man in the Iron Mask (1939) as an aging Porthos. When that film was remade as The Fifth Musketeer (1979), that role was taken by Hale Jr.. In that same movie the role of an aging D'Artagnan was played by Cornel Wilde, this picture's son of D'Artagnan. Also here, the elderly Porthos is played by Moroni Olsen, who played that character in his younger days in the film of the original Dumas novel, The Three Musketeers (1935).
Completed in 1950, but not released until 1952.
This was Moroni Olsen's second outing as Porthos. He played the role in RKO's The Three Musketeers (1935) and appeared as The Bailiff in The Ritz Brothers The Three Musketeers (1939).
The film is historically accurate in depicting Anne of Austria, the dowager consort of Louis XIII, as being regent for her preteen son Louis XIV. The character of the Duc de Lavalle is fictional: however the Queen's regency was troubled by insurrection fomented by Louis le Grand Condé, a scion of the Bourbon dynasty. The character of Princess Henriette is also fictional: besides LouisX IV, Louis XIII and Queen Anne's only offspring had been a younger son: Philippe duc d'Orleans. The film's scripters' name for their fictional French princess may have resulted from an awareness of Philippe d'Orleans'eventual spouse being the British princess Henrietta.
The role of Princess Henriette afforded Nancy Gates her second featured role in a Maureen O'Hara cinematic vehicle, the first having been in The Spanish Main (1945).