Anecdotes

Star and co-producer Tyrone Power had shot more than half of the film when he collapsed from a massive heart attack during a dueling scene with George Sanders on 15 November 1958, and died a short time later. Yul Brynner replaced Power as Solomon, and re-shot all of Power's scenes. Power is still visible in some long shots.

Two of the leads, Yul Brynner and George Sanders, were both born in Russia of foreign parents.

Robert Taylor turned down the opportunity to replace Tyrone Power.

Final feature film to be directed by King Vidor.

Although extremely rare, this is not the only time that a major character had to be recast in a Hollywood film after the filming was almost or entirely completed.

• Sir Ridley Scott's Tout l'argent du monde (2017) was entirely done, the film's major co-star, Kevin Spacey, had to be replaced with Christopher Plummer due to a sex scandal. Save for possibly one or two long shots, all of Spacey's scenes were then reshot in nine days with Plummer. Incidentally, Plummer happened to have been Scott's original choice for Spacey's role.
• Michael J. Fox had to infamously replace Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly in Retour vers le futur (1985), even though at least one third of the movie was already completed with Stoltz in the role, because the filmmakers thought that Stoltz's Marty was simply coming off as too serious.
• Perhaps the most extreme example is the horror film, Le mystère des 13 (1966), where Kim Novak was seriously injured in a riding accident after filming a reported seven-eighths of her leading role in the film. Although she did make a full recovery, she was unable to return to work for many weeks, and the company was obliged to re-film all her scenes and complete the film with Deborah Kerr.