The first choice for Mr. Jordan was Cary Grant who reportedly turned down a US $1-million offer from Warren Beatty. Website Wikipedia states: "Beatty lobbied hard for Cary Grant to accept the role of Mr. Jordan, going so far as to have Grant's ex-wife, Dyan Cannon, who stars as Julia Farnsworth, urge him to take the part. Although Grant was tempted, he ultimately decided not to end his retirement from filmmaking". The Turner Classic Movies website states: "Beatty had some grandiose notions about who should play Mr. Jordan... He wanted Cary Grant... but Grant had retired a dozen years earlier, and had no interest in returning to the screen". Beatty also considered former Senator and 1968 anti-war Democrat presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy for the part prior to James Mason in the end being cast as Mr. Jordan.
Bruce Kimmel has clarified confusion regarding the film's source stage play and the various cinema movies associated with it in some way: "Once upon a time there was a play by Harry Segall called 'Heaven Can Wait', written in 1938 and not produced on Broadway. Nevertheless, the film rights were bought and the resulting 1941 film, retitled Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), was a hit. This was followed by a 1943 Ernst Lubitsch film called Heaven Can Wait (1943) that had nothing to do with Mr. Segall, his play or Here Comes Mr. Jordan. Then came Down to Earth (1947), starring Rita Hayworth, which was a sort of sequel to Here Comes Mr. Jordan, bringing back the characters played by Edward Everett Horton and James Gleason, but not the central characters. That same year [actually late 1946], the Segall play finally made it to Broadway but under a different title, 'Wonderful Journey' - a production that ran only nine performances. Flash forward to 1978 - Paramount Pictures and Warren Beatty remake Here Comes Mr. Jordan but change the title back to Segall's original title, 'Heaven Can Wait'. Two years later comes Xanadu (1980), starring Olivia Newton-John, which was a sort of remake of Down to Earth, the sequel to Here Comes Mr. Jordan. Now jump to 2001 when Segall's 'Heaven Can Wait' is remade again, this time as Down to Earth (2001) starring Chris Rock - and having nothing to do with Down to Earth, the sort of sequel to Here Comes Mr. Jordan."
The fictitious Super Bowl game (Rams vs. Steelers) was filmed during halftime of the Rams/Chargers preseason at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on September 1, 1977.
Premiere magazine voted this movie as one of "The 50 Greatest Comedies Of All Time" in 2006.
The type of musical instrument Warren Beatty plays is a soprano saxophone and the composition he is often heard practicing is an old Italian ballad called "Ciribiribin".