Trivia

According to Robert Vaughn in his memoirs, Fred MacMurray was the frugal type. He always brought his sandwich for lunch on the set and was also the stingy kind for many details.

Co-star Bing Russell, who plays a character named "George Fletcher," was the father of Kurt Russell.

Director Nathan Juran started his career as an art director. As such, he won an Oscar® for How Green Was My Valley (1941) and worked on several great Anthony Mann pictures. As a director, he was best known for fantasy films such as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and Jack the Giant Killer (1962).

Good Day for a Hanging (1959) is an American B Western film directed by Nathan Juran and starring Fred MacMurray and Margaret Hayes. Screenplay was written by Daniel B. Ullman, and Maurice Zimm based on the short story "The Reluctant Hangman," by John Reese in Texas Rangers (Mar 1956).

Although onscreen credits list the author's name as John Reese, the story was actually published under Reese's pseudonym, "John Jo Carpenter."

The offbeat Good Day for a Hanging (1959) is one of eight westerns Fred MacMurray made between 1955 and 1959. Like several other leading men of the 1930s and 1940s - such as James Stewart, Clark Gable, Joel McCrea and Robert Taylor - MacMurray entered a western phase late in his career. Western roles suited these actors who were getting grayer, harder, and more grizzled-looking. Cheaply and efficiently made, MacMurray's westerns weren't on the level of some of the others (mainly because his weren't directed by the likes of Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher or André De Toth) but they're better than average efforts nonetheless.