Gregory Peck was originally cast as the U.S. Cavalry officer, but producer Michael Todd felt Peck wasn't taking the role seriously enough and fired him, recasting the role with Tim McCoy.
Marlene Dietrich's gown reportedly cost $300,000.
Ronald Colman came out of a 5 year retirement to do his cameo.
Fernandel was initially stunned at being offered such a tiny part. Michael Todd's prowess at persuasion soon won him over.
Orson Welles was a little upset he did not get a cameo in the film. He was upset because before Michael Todd produced this film, he produced a stage version by Welles. The play flopped but Todd turned the project into a film anyway and it enjoyed great success. Welles felt he gave the idea to Todd in the first place.
John Wayne was considered for the role of the cavalry officer, but he turned it down.
Maurice Chevalier was invited to do a cameo but asked in return to be billed at the foot of the cast-list. Michael Todd said "no" so Chevalier declined the offer.
Alexander Korda had previously taken an unsuccessful stab at the material. His advice to Michael Todd was "Back away from it, Mike. I've been trying to lick it for years. Total loss."
Shirley MacLaine to this day contends that she was miscast in this, her third film.
Shirley MacLaine wrote that filming a scene with thousands of extras ground to a complete halt because the propman forgot to put the bottle of champagne in the balloon with David Niven and Cantinflas.
John Farrow directed a week or so of the Spanish scenes.
David Niven always professed that Phileas Fogg was his favorite role.
Imanos Williams, a real Japanese circus performer, appears in the scene where Cantinflas joins up with a Japanese circus as a performer.
Michael Todd's original estimate for the film's budget was $3 million. The film ended up costing nearly double that, largely thanks to Todd's demands for verisimilitude and location shooting.
Noel Coward was the first star in England to sign for the project.
Victor Young's fabulous Oscar winning music score was recorded in July, 1956 at the former Charlie Chaplin Studio on La Brea Avenue in Hollywood. At the time, Charles Chaplin had sold it to an independent outfit that had renamed it Kling Studios. Michael Todd was leasing space there during production. A sound stage normally used for filming was specially converted into a music scoring stage. Six Neumann U-47 condenser microphones were placed over the orchestra which were all fed to a 35mm magnetic six-track recorder. The entire set up was only used once for this film and was later torn down and the stage reverted back to filming.
68,894 extras from 13 different countries worked on this film. This is one of the largest number of extras to ever appear in a single picture. The 1,243 extras listed on the IMDb page (and also in the original program book) were only the extras who worked on the film in Hollywood, California alone.
According to Farley Granger in his autobiography "Include Me Out," Mike Todd, while shooting on location in Venice, filmed him as a gondolier on the Grand Canal, a cameo that was never used in the film.
According to David Niven's agent, producer Michael Todd originally wanted Cary Grant for the role of Phileas Fogg, but had given up after trying for 6 months.