Ava Gardner says in her autobiography that the actor Mario Cabré, who plays the bullfighter in love with her in the movie, wanted to do the same in real life. According to her, he was a real pain in the ass.
The great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas showed up for the location shoot of the race car speed test on the beach at Pendine Sands, which was near his home in Wales. He can be spotted briefly at the start of the scene, around 1:11:03-04, as the hatless man in the brown jacket and beige trousers at the extreme left of the crowd in the background (ignoring the family of three on the left) almost one-third of the picture's width in from the left. This is the first known surviving motion picture footage of Thomas.
Photographed in the English Technicolor process by Jack Cardiff, this film is considered one of the most beautiful colour films ever made.
When cinematographer Jack Cardiff met with Ava Gardner to discuss how she wanted to be shot, Gardner had an unusual request for him. She asked him to watch out for when she started menstruating as there is an acidity to a woman's skin that a camera can pick up. Cardiff took note. Many consider this film to capture Gardner's beauty better than any other film she made.