John Wayne's last film with Christopher Mitchum. The two actors fell out when Mitchum disagreed with Wayne's conservative views during a television interview, and they never spoke again. Mitchum tried to get in touch with Wayne in 1979 when the veteran star was dying of cancer, but did not receive any response.
This was the final film in which John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara worked together; they had previously collaborated in Rio Grande (1950), Der Sieger (1952), Dem Adler gleich (1957), and MacLintock (1963), and O'Hara considered Wayne her first, best friend, even going so far as naming a wing of the home she shared with her husband, General Charles Blair, the John Wayne wing.
In an early scene, Patrick Wayne calls John Wayne "Daddy" in a mocking and disrespectful tone, leading to a fight where John tosses Patrick into a mud hole. During an interview for the 50th anniversary of the film, a young lady from the audience asked Patrick if he called the Duke "daddy" at home. Patrick responded, "You know, all my life, I called him 'Daddy'."