Actor, later producer/executive, Robert Evans turned down the part of Reles, because it was "not the lead role" and Peter Falk was cast instead, becoming Falk's first Oscar nominated performance.
Many times in interviews and on talk shows, Peter Falk credited his casting and appearance in this movie as his breakthrough performance, or his career-making film, even though he had been toiling around Regional New England theater, the New York stage and in sporadic television productions for five plus years.
Stuart Rosenberg was originally hired to direct the movie. Because of a Screen Actors Guild strike, which occurred from March 7-April 18, 1960, Rosenberg left the project and was replaced by the film's producer Burt Balaban.
An even more fictionalized version of the same events and time period, and told from the point of view of the prosecuting attorney, the 1951 film La femme à abattre (1951), starring Humphrey Bogart and Zero Mostel, was released in the U.K. under the title "Murder, Inc.".