Maureen Stapleton (Pilar) suffered a breakdown during filming. She tried to quit because she was afraid of machine guns. One morning she didn't show up to filming so the crew, led by producer Fred Coe, went to her apartment. "She was holding up the Spanish Civil War", Stapleton's costar Eli Wallach recalled. "They walked right past the doorman and went up in the elevator to her apartment. Her boyfriend opened the door. 'Where is she?', Fred Coe asked. She was in the bedroom. There was nothing going to stop Coe. He went into the bedroom, and she was in bed, naked. He tore the covers right off the bed, put her over his shoulder, put a blanket over her, and carried her downstairs, into a cab, and right to the studio. He told her, 'Get your ass into makeup and get out here.' I think she was more terrified of him than she was of machine guns. She did what he told her to do, and the scene was shot."
Nicholas Colasanto's TV debut.
Most of the actors in the production were working on Broadway shows at night, so they were exhausted during rehearsals.
According to Maureen Stapleton, there was one sequence in this two-part production done on film; the rest was done live.
Vladimir Sokoloff played the same role that he played in the 1943 movie version.