Gene Kelly fought to get The Nicholas Brothers (Fayard Nicholas and Harold Nicholas) included in the movie.
Gene Kelly helped invent a device which allowed the bulky Technicolor cameras to shoot from low angles.
Judy Garland missed 99 of the 135 shooting days due to illness.
Judy Garland was smoking four packs of cigarettes a day during filming.
Cole Porter was asked to write the songs for the movie, and he did on condition that he could change the name of the Pirate (who was named Estramundo in the play) to Macoco - the name of a friend of Porter's whose nickname was Mack the Black.
At one time this movie was going to star Cary Grant and Greer Garson. When that project fell through it was turned into a musical.
Film debut of Lola Albright.
The "Be a Clown" sequence was cut by exhibitors in Memphis and other U.S. cities in the South because it included The Nicholas Brothers, who were black.
The film was a major financial bust upon release, eventually losing $2 million for MGM.
The original script by Anita Loos and Joseph Than included a role for Lena Horne as a Caribbean dressmaker, which was later cut. Miss Horne twice recorded Cole Porter's sensual movie ballad for Judy Garland, "Love of My Life": initially waxed by Lena for a 1948 MGM Records single; then sung in a Porter medley on the best-selling RCA Victor LP from 1957, "Lena Horne at the Waldorf Astoria," which has been reissued on CD by the Collectables label.
The second of three movie musicals in which Judy Garland and Gene Kelly starred in together, though they did appear separately in other movies and features.
The torrid romance enacted by Judy Garland and Gene Kelly in the song-and-dance number "Voodoo" so enraged MGM chief Louis B. Mayer that he demanded the negative be burned.
Two songs written by Cole Porter for Judy Garland were revised in the release print. Judy's first rendition of "Love of My Life," which included the verse, was not used. However, on the MGM Records soundtrack album, listeners heard Miss Garland's initial prerecording. Also dropped from the movie was the original "Mack the Black," intended as the curtain-raiser. In the revamped version transferred to midway, replacing the feverish Garland-Gene Kelly "Voodoo" number, Cole Porter's somewhat violent "Mack the Black" lyrics, including a reference to killing babies, were toned down. A portion of the original "Mack the Black" footage with Judy can be viewed in the trailer. The three discarded prerecordings, along with the two final takes heard in the picture, are included on Rhino's soundtrack CD.
When one dance sequence was being rehearsed, Harold Nicholas was just going through the motions, and Gene Kelly accused him of not knowing the routine - so Nicholas danced the whole routine, alone, full-out and flawlessly. Kelly was speechless.