After Cecil B. DeMille saw this movie he said, "When I saw Yvonne De Carlo as Maria I knew I had my Sephora for The Ten Commandments (1956)." DeMille had always wanted to work with Yvonne DeCarlo since she was under contract to Paramount Pictures in the early 1940s. He wanted her for Delilah in Samson and Delilah (1949). However Paramount wanted either of three actresses for the part of Delilah - Betty Hutton, Maria Montez, or Hedy Lamarr. Of course Lamarr won the part.
MGM put Ava Gardner on suspension when she refused to go to Mexico to play the part of Maria of the River Road. The role was then given to Yvonne De Carlo (a good friend of Ava's), who accepted the offer "just to see what MGM was like." De Carlo was a Universal-International contract player and had never worked as a star at MGM before.
The film was moderately successful at the box office. Yvonne De Carlo said that although it "wasn't too much of a hit." Sombrero (1953) worked as a screen test for her when Cecil B. DeMille was casting the role of Sephora in The Ten Commandments (1956).