Trivia / The Desperate Hours

• Creator Backlash: After the movie previewed, Humphrey Bogart told William Wyler, "I think I'm too old to play gangsters".
• Dueling-Stars Movie: Humphrey Bogart vs. Fredric March.
• Executive Meddling: The music Gail Kubik composed for the picture was considered too modernistic by Paramount's executives, therefore some of it was rescored by Daniele Amfitheatrof. Two years later, Paramount returned the music rights to Kubik and published his suite from the score titled Scenario for Orchestra.
• Hey, It's That Place!: The house used in the final seasons of Leave It to Beaver was used for exterior shots of the Hilliards' home.
• Production Posse: Ray Collins, Fredric March, and Ray Teal had all appeared in The Best Years of Our Lives, directed by Wyler, and Wyler had directed Humphrey Bogart in Dead End (1937).
• Recursive Adaptation: It was novel, then a play, then a film, which was remade.
• Self-Adaptation: Joseph Hayes adapted his novel and play.
• Those Two Actors: Dewey Martin (Hal Griffin) and Mary Murphy (Cindy Hilliard) appeared together again in The Outer Limits, in the episode "The Premonition".
• What Could Have Been:
  • A young Paul Newman, who played Glenn Griffin in the play, was replaced by Humphrey Bogart for the movie because Bogart was a bigger star at the time. Griffin was given an Age Lift in the film to accommodate the middle-aged Bogart.
  • Spencer Tracy was first cast in Fredric March's part, but both Tracy and Bogart insisted on top billing and Tracy eventually withdrew.

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