At about 79 minutes, in a scene of Indians attacking the wagons full of soldiers, one Indian gets shot off his horse, then is run over by a wagon drawn by four horses . That wasn't a planned stunt--he was supposed to be "shot" and fall off the side of his horse, but the horse unexpectedly reared back and dumped him into the path of the wagon, which ran over him. He suffered numerous broken bones and ribs, but the scene was left in.
This movie is loosely based upon the career of Dr. Leonard Wood who participated in the last campaign against Geronimo in 1886. He took over an infantry detachment after the officers were killed and was awarded the Medal of Honor for that and for carrying dispatches 100 miles through hostile territory. Wood formed the Rough Riders with Theodore Roosevelt and was eventually appointed Chief of Staff of the Army. The Fort Leonard Wood army base in Missouri is named after him.
Filmed in two separate versions--3-D and CinemaScope--with different aspect ratios (1.37:1 for the 3-D, and 2.55:1 for the CinemaScope print). Only the wide screen version was ever released, though the 3-D elements still exist in Warner Bros. vault. Also the first wide screen Western of the 1950s. The flat (i.e. non 3-D) 1.37:1 version was also made available to theaters that were not yet equipped to project CinemaScope.
Keeping with industry standard of not harming animals, when the howitzer loaded with grape shot is fired, the Indians are all shot down, but their horses run away.
The wide-screen version of this film was photographed using Zeiss anamorphic lenses. The system was to be called WarnerScope, but it was essentially a straight copy of Fox's CinemaScope process. However, Warner Bros. realized that the Zeiss lenses were of inferior quality to the Bausch & Lomb lenses Fox used for CinemaScope. Ultimately it decided to drop the WarnerScope name, and instead licensed CinemaScope from Fox so it could use the superior Bausch & Lomb-designed lenses. These were first used by Warner for Une étoile est née (1954).