The screenplay by Walter Bernstein, based on a short story by Robert Lowry ("Layover in El Paso"), is highly reminiscent of the 1938 film The Shopworn Angel.

Kay is a sophisticated Italian woman, the mistress of a Manhattan millionaire industrialist known simply as The Man, who uses her to help him influence his contacts at The Pentagon.

[8] George Sanders later recalled, " We filmed it in 100-degree temperatures here in New York in a horrid little studio with no ventilation and on a stage which was not air-conditioned, and they had to keep my head wrapped in ice packs.

[1] Lumet told Peter Bogdanovich he had a series of fights with the producers over the film’s editing, about “Sophia [Loren]’s performance, largely.

Tab Hunter later wrote in his memoirs: There are lots of reasons why otherwise-good films fail at the box office, but bad timing and misleading marketing probably top the list.

[12] In his review in The New York Times, Bosley Crowther stated, "Walter Bernstein's screen play is a breezy, banal and bumptious thing, and Sidney Lumet has directed it with so many close-ups that it looks like a travesty of a 'silent' style.

"[13] Walter Bernstein wrote in his memoirs, "Tab, sweet and shy, with the weak good looks of many young leading men in the fifties, was just not in her [Loren's] league.