As production dragged on, Humphrey Bogart, who was an avid yachtsman, was starting to get increasingly anxious about missing the Honolulu Classic, the Catalina-to-Hawaii race in which he usually took part. Despite assurances from the studio that he would be wrapped on the picture by then, he started to constantly dog John Huston about whether he would be done in time. Eventually Huston had enough and grabbed Bogart by the nose and twisted hard. Bogart never asked him how long before the shooting was over again.
Director John Huston had read the book "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" by B. Traven in 1936 and had always thought the material would make a great movie. Based on a 19th-century ballad by a German poet, Traven's book reminded Huston of his own adventures in the Mexican cavalry. When Huston became a director at Warner Bros., the smashing success of his initial effort, The Maltese Falcon, gave him the clout to ask to write and direct the project, for which Warner Bros. had previously secured the movie rights.
Filmed in Mexico, though Warners' studio head Jack L. Warner had the unit return to Hollywood when the budget started to exceed $3 million (Warner, however, did admit that he thought the film was one of the greatest ever made).
Initially thrilled at Walter Huston's scene-stealing performance, as the shoot wore on producer Henry Blanke started to have second thoughts about Huston upstaging the film's star, Humphrey Bogart, and so John Huston started to get notes from the studio telling him to tone down his father's performance.
Just as John Huston was starting to shoot scenes in Tampico, Mexico, the production was shut down inexplicably by the local government. It turns out that a local newspaper printed a false story that accused the filmmakers of making a production that was unflattering to Mexico. Fortunately, two of Huston's associates, Diego Rivera and Miguel Covarrubias, went to bat for the director with the President of Mexico. The libelous accusations were dropped.
On seeing the depth of Walter Huston's performance, Humphrey Bogart famously said. "One Huston is bad enough, but two are murder."
One of the first American films to be made almost entirely on location outside the USA.
Producer Henry Blanke had originally wanted John Garfield in the Tim Holt role, but Garfield was unavailable. Ronald Reagan was then considered.
The bum seated near Walter Huston in the first scene in the Oso Negro flophouse is Jack Holt, father of Tim Holt. Holt is not the man in the barroom scene who speaks to Humphrey Bogart and Tim Holt in the saloon, as stated by Eric Lax in his DVD commentary. That actor is Pat Flaherty.
The fight scene in the cantina took five days to shoot.
The film took 5-1/2 months to shoot and was 29 days over schedule.
The little boy who sells Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) the portion of the winning lottery ticket is Robert Blake (of "Little Rascals" and Baretta fame).
The movie's line "Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinking badges!" was voted as the #36 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100).
The reclusive novelist B. Traven was asked if he would like to visit the set during location shooting. He demurred, but said he would be sending an associate instead. The associate was actually Traven himself, using a pseudonym.
There were scenes in which Walter Huston had to speak fluent Spanish, a language he did not know off camera. To fill this need, John Huston hired a Mexican to record the lines, and then the elder Huston memorized them so well that many assumed he knew the language like a native.
To lend authenticity to his role, Walter Huston was persuaded by his son John to perform without his false teeth.
When John Huston first started working on the project in 1941, the studio had George Raft, Edward G. Robinson and John Garfield in mind for the three main roles. Then World War II intervened. By the time Huston came back from making several documentaries for the war effort, Humphrey Bogart had become Warner Brothers' biggest star. This was entirely appropriate, for when Bogart first got wind of the fact that Huston might be making a film of the B. Traven novel, he immediately started badgering Huston for a part.