[2] The film was released by Columbia Pictures and has music by Franz Liszt, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Richard Wagner, arranged by Muir Mathieson.

His wife, Dolly, is a harpist who acts on her husband's behalf, presenting his impossible demands to the symphony's backers, only to then find him dallying with a considerably younger musician.

His agent, Max Archer, tries to get him a new contract, but young Wilbur, son of the orchestra's patron saint, insists to Victor's horror that any agreement must include a performance of his mother's favorite piece of music, John Philip Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever.

The play Once More, With Feeling, which was adapted for this film, opened in New Haven in September 1958 and then on Broadway on 21 October 1958 at the National Theatre, in a production directed by George Axelrod and designed by George Jenkins, and starring Joseph Cotten, Arlene Francis, and Walter Matthau, who was nominated for a Tony Award as Best Featured Actor.

In January, 1960, Pyramid Books issued a paperback novelization "based on the stage and screen plays"; the author was celebrated American potboiler novelist and showbiz biographer Ann Pinchot (1905–1998).