This movie won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Oscar Best Picture nominees often get nominated for (and frequently win) a screenplay award as well. In this year, all five Best Picture nominees were nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, making the field's competition for the Oscar somewhat easier.

The scene in the dinghy where the small boats gets passed by two large ships was filmed on the Universal Studios back-lot in a large tank on a sound set. In an interview with one of the child stars, Stephanie Berrington now Stephanie Berrington McNutt who played Elizabeth, in an interview said: "It was a large tank like a swimming pool. We had wave-making machines which were logs attached to steel arms that kept slapping the water to make waves. The larger ships were actually projected onto screens above the water. At first, the dinghy was just floating free and was not attached to anything. In one of the first few takes, it took on so much water that it sank (it wasn't supposed to) and most of the children were thrilled. It was like going for a swim. There was one child, however, who did not know how to swim so the directors and producers all jumped into the water in their good clothes and expensive watches to "save" us. Needless to say, most of us didn't want to be saved at all! Photos were taken and I believe they were published in the Los Angeles Times."

Sidney Poitier visited the set during the production shoot in Jamaica to congratulate director Ralph Nelson on receiving a Best Director Oscar nomination for Lilies of the Field, a film he had worked on with Poitier.

The production of this movie utilized about eight weeks in Hollywood at Universal Studios and about four weeks on location at a coconut plantation in Ocho Rios, Jamaica.

Cary Grant plays a scruffy whisky-swilling beachcomber sailor in this movie, Cary Grant is considered to be 'cast against type' for this role, quite antithetical to his suave sophisticated debonair on-screen persona.