Producer and Director Raoul Walsh did not like Daniela Rocca and did not believe she was a good actress or dancer. Walsh had Rocca's double perform Vashti's dance. He also gave one of Rocca's lines to another actress.
This movie was made in Italy because there was a writers' strike in Hollywood.
Giorgio Giovannini's extravagant Persian sets are historically accurate. Several surviving architectural elements from the real palaces at Shushan (or Susa) were faithfully reproduced in this movie.
One of history's most famous battles is Thermopylae (480 BC), in which Persian King Xerxes (also called Ahasuerus) faced off against Spartan King Leonidas. In this film, [link: nm0250724] played Xerxes. Egan's next film was 1962's [link: tt0055719], in which he played Leonidas.
Raoul Walsh's antepenultimate (third to last) film as a director, and his penultimate (second to last) screen credit as a producer. He died twenty years after this movie's release, in 1980.