In the film, John Patterson (Richard Kiley) is depicted as supportive of African-American Zeke Ward (James Edwards) and his family. In real life, following his term as Alabama attorney general (1954-58), Patterson ran for governor in 1958 in an openly racist campaign and won. One of his opponents, George Wallace, had run as a racial moderate and told his friends after the election, "John Patterson out-niggered me, and I'm never gonna be out-niggered again." Four years later, in 1962, Wallace won the governorship of Alabama as an avowed segregationist.
The film went into production so quickly that some of the criminals it portrayed were still standing trial while filming was taking place. Contrary to the film's suggestion, many of the key perpetrators of the criminal syndicate received lenient sentences.
While discussing this movie, Film Noir historian Eddie Muller pointed out that the genre during the mid-late 1950s became less like the 1940s classic noir and more like documentary exposés, and also shared certain elements of the 1930s crime genre.
Such was director Phil Karlson's attention to detail that he had some of his actors wear the real clothes of their screen counterparts.