Steve McQueen hated this movie even more so than "The Blob (1958)." According to a 2011 biography of McQueen, he walked out of the first public preview screening, vowing to never again work for "MGM."
When the Russian Consul, berating his code-breakers and underlings, begins hitting the desk with his shoe, this is a humorous reference to Russian leader Nikita Kruschev's actions at the United Nations in October of the previous year (1960), when Kruschev banged the rostrum with his shoe in anger at statements made by the Filipino delegation.
The play "The Golden Fleecing" upon which this film is based opened on Broadway the the Henry Miller's Theatre, 124 W. 43rd St., on October 15, 1959 and ran for 84 performances until December 26, 1959.
The type of computer program in this story did not exist in the late 1950s when this play was written, but did as of 1990 and is a form of artificial intelligence called a neural network. They were not developed until about thirty years later, so this story in a way foresaw their development. Although probably not able to predict numbers of a roulette wheel spin because each result is independent of previous ones, neural networks can, by simulating the human brain, solve widely ranging problems using real data that are interdependent.
This film was a mild success at the box office, earning MGM a profit of $122,000 ($1M in 2018) according to studio records.
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