Producer Stanley Kramer directed the framing story, which refers to the present-day story that Sidney Poitier tells to Peter Falk.
The hill where the "imaginary friend" scene was shot would later become the site of the Universal Studios theme park.
While Sidney Poitier's character appears to be considerably older than Peter Falk's, the two actors were only a few months apart in age (yet it is very clear that Poitier is aged purposefully in order to tell Falk the story of when he was younger, and Falk's age is the same as Poitier's youthful age, when most of this story takes place, during the story-telling flashback).
The poster, with Sidney Poitier and Bobby Darin confronting each other as if about to wrestle, unmistakably mimics the poster for another race-themed Stanley Kramer production starring Sidney Poitier, Fugitivos (1958).
Contains newsreel clips of American Nazis marching in Times Square, at Madison Square Garden, and other places.