This film received a landmark color television presentation in Philadelphia, Saturday 6 October 1956, on WFIL (Channel 6), as Ford Film Playhouse's promotional introduction to the new line of 1957 Fords; at this time color TV was still in its infancy, usually limited to special presentations, most often on the National Broadcasting Company's affiliated stations, of which WFIL was not the local representative. Vintage feature films, which may have been original filmed in Technicolor, even comparatively recent ones like this one, which was only seven years old at the time, were not considered worthy of this special treatment, with added costs passed along to the sponsors, so were normally only shown in B&W. In this case, since the film was of British origin, there was not the problem of all the automobiles being of noticeable vintage, since British automotive styles were less familiar to American audiences, and more difficult to date. However, the years had not been kind to the so-called "New Look" women's fashions of 1948-1949 so prominently displayed, and which by 1956 had long since become the "Old Look."
The person who "dumbfounded" Mayfair, mentioned in the opening credits, is Sir Stafford Cripps (1889-1952), a Labour Member of Parliment from 1931 to 1950 representing Bristol. As a member of Clement Attlee's government, he was responsible for selling British jet engine technology to the Soviets in 1946.
Michael Arlen in the crazy opening credits was said to have confounded Mayfair in 1920. Arlen was a British-Armenian author highly regarded for his cynical romantic novels about post World War I London society. He later wrote a short story in 1940, "The Gay Falcon," that led to a series of Hollywood movies based on the Falcon character. George Sanders played the lead role in those highly popular films.
When Michael goes to bail out Henry from the jail, he tells Inspector Hennessey that the place hadn't changed much. The inspector asks when it was that he had seen him there. Michael says it was when April the Fifth won the Derby. That would have been the149th running of The Derby at Epsom Downs on June 1, 1932. That was 17 years before the time of this film.
This film was the second most popular picture at the UK box office in 1949, behind The Third Man (1949).