There was a dialect specialist who was hired to teach Neville Brand how to speak with the Italian accent. But it was Neville Brand who instead taught the poor man how to get drunk; Robert Stack says in his biography that the dialect specialist was loaded every night because of Neville Brand.
Paul Picerni, usually playing federal agent Lee Hobson in most of the later episodes of the series, appears as a gangster in the present pilot.
Robert Stack says in his biography that during the kiss of death scene between Neville Brand and Frank DeKova, no one talked on the set, the silence was some kind of terrific. And he also says that, before the shooting of the scene, a joker told Neville Brand that Frank DeKova was gay and told separately to Frank DeKova that Neville Brand was gay. So the tension on the two opponents faces was very obvious.
This is the first of 20 appearances Frank Wilcox makes in this series, each time playing Federal DA Beecher Asbury. While still appearing in this series, he took on the recurring role of oilman John Brewster, a role he is perhaps best remembered for, in the hit TV sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies (1962).
This is the first of eight appearances Frank DeKova makes in the series. Except for the first season, when he appears as Louis Campagne three times, all his other appearances are in the roles of different sinister characters, roles he frequently played throughout his acting career. Even so, he is perhaps best known to audiences from the 1960s for his recurring role in a TV sitcom as Chief Wild Eagle from F Troop (1965).