While John Wayne was honored to be nominated for an Academy Award for this film, he believed the nomination should have been for She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949).
John Wayne turned the film down at first, since at 42 he was rather old for the part and because he felt the public had had enough of war films.
Kirk Douglas was considered for the role of Sgt. Stryker before director Allan Dwan realized he could get John Wayne to play the part.
Following the success of the movie, John Wayne was invited to place his footprints in cement outside Grauman's Chinese Theater. As part of the event, actual black sand from Iwo Jima was flown to Hollywood and mixed into the cement in which he left his footprints and "fist print".
This film recreates the famous raising of the flag on Iwo Jima, taken on Feb. 23, 1945, by photographer Joe Rosenthal. The three surviving flag raisers make a cameo appearance during this scene. Rene A. Gagnon, Ira H. Hayes and John H. Bradley are seen with John Wayne as he instructs them to hoist the flag (Wayne gives the folded flag to Gagnon). The flag used to recreate the incident is the actual flag that was raised on Mount Suribachi. It was loaned to the movie by the US Marine Corps Museum in Quantico, VA. Other films that would later depict the flag-raising on Iwo Jima include The Outsider (1961) and Flags of Our Fathers (2006).