This was the fourth film telecast on "NBC Saturday Night at the Movies," the first television program to exclusively broadcast post-1948 theatrical films on US network television. This one was first telecast 14 October 1961, and like the opener of the series, How to Marry a Millionaire, and several others which followed, had been filmed in CinemaScope, at its original 2.55:1 ratio, and so had to be "formatted to fit your screen" i.e. shown pan/scan in the conventional 4:3 TV ratio, losing nearly half of the image in the process, and literally destroying the composition of each scene. But viewers didn't seem to mind. The idea proved so successful that NBC soon followed it up with another series with the identical format, "Monday Night at the Movies," and it wasn't long before the format was taken up by both CBS and ABC.
This was first announced as a starring vehicle for John Wayne and Gary Cooper.
A scene was cut featuring a priest telling the main characters not to go on the journey. This character was referred to in the film.
The story takes place in 1849.