Marilyn Monroe, who was friends with Nicholas Ray and shooting Bus Stop at an adjoining stage at 20th Century Fox, shot a brief cameo as a nurse during a hospital sequence. Her scene was deleted because the studio was afraid that Monroe would use this cameo as the second film she owed under her contract.
Average Shot Length (ASL) = 11 seconds
Playwright Clifford Odets was invited on the set by the director Nicholas Ray, where he worked on re-writing the final scene of the film. Ed Avery (Jamese Mason), still delirious out of his coma, starting to talk about Abraham Lincoln was Odet's contribution.
Though only Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum are credited for the screenplay, the shooting script was entirely re-worked by director Nicholas Ray and actor/producer James Mason, who added the first 20 minutes of the film depicting Ed Avery's daily life before being hospitalized. Re-writes by Ray, his friend Gavin Lambert (who at that time was living together with Ray, recently confessing that they were actually lovers) and Clifford Odets went on all through the shooting process.