The fight between Gregory Peck and Broderick Crawford was filmed in one take.
The scenes where Gregory Peck and Buddy Ebsen ride up and down on the "People dumb waiter" were not shot in Berlin, but in Frankfurt. It's located in the old IG Farben building that used to be the 5th Corps Headquarters.
Gregory Peck said that director Nunally Johnson was not a gifted director, although very close and kind to actors.
Their uniforms indicate both Van Dyke and Eddie were combat veterans of World War II. Van Dyke served in Italy with the 5th Army and earned the 2nd highest award for valor, the Distinguished Service Cross, plus a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. Eddie fought with the 4th Infantry Division in France and won both the Silver Star and Bronze Star for valor.
Gregory Peck's character makes frequent references to American football in the movie. He indicates that he was once a pro-football player in fact. The most time-specific football related comment he makes is when he says the college in his home town "used to have a pretty good football team before all this two platoon stuff. Might happen again." He was referring to the fact that prior to 1941, in college football all players played both offense and defense and stayed in play for pretty much the entire game. In 1941 rule changes allowed for unlimited substitution and teams started developing a separate group (platoon) of players to play offense and a separate group to play defense. Smaller schools were at a disadvantage under this new rule because they didn't have enough players to make two entire platoons. His remark that "might happen again" referred to a 1953 return to the old rules and college teams went back to the older pre-1941 single platoon system, meaning his small college might become competitive once again. College football eventually changed the rules again in 1964 and has had multi-platoon teams ever since