When asked about this movie Burt Reynolds replied, "The toughest part about 'Angel Baby' was doing a fight scene with George Hamilton, who at the time was a contender for the title of World's Most Uncoordinated Human Being. Yet he had to beat me up, something that was almost impossible for him to fake. In the dumbest fight scene ever, he sort of lifted me, and I leapt into the bushes, hoping it looked like I was thrown. But it just looked like he lifted me and I'd jumped."
Mercedes McCambridge recalls in her autobiography The Quality of Mercy that while shooting the film in the Miami area, they hired a local boy to play the secondary part of Hoke Adams, a Southern-styled bully and skirt-chaser. She recalled: "He was kinda cute, but he was always disappearing into the bushes with a scantily clad Florida dollie. I didn't catch his name, the crew called him "hot pants," but his paycheck, meager though it was, was paid to the order of Burt Reynolds ... cute but girl-crazy! Probably never amount to much."
Feature-film debut of Burt Reynolds. When asked about this movie Burt Reynolds replied, "George Hamilton beat me up in this film. Does that tell you something?"
Made in 1960, the film was shelved for a year in order not to compete with United Artist's Oscar-winning film Elmer Gantry, le charlatan (1960) which had a similar evangelistic theme.