In the scenes where the posse is pursuing the chained duo in The Defiant Ones, there is a character who keeps playing the radio and annoying the state patrol captain. He's played by Carl Switzer, who as a child played Alfafa in the "Our Gang" (aka "Little Rascals") comedies of the 1930s. In 1959, Switzer, a compulsive poker player, was shot to death in a card game in Van Nuys, Calif. He was disputing an amount of $50 which he said another player owed him. The death was ruled "justifiable homicide."

Sidney Poitier's stand-in for this movie was Ivan Dixon, who was later a regular in the TV comedy series Hogan's Heroes (1965 - 1970). He also had parts in the Poitier films Porgy and Bess (1959) and A Raisin in the Sun (1961). He became a director in 1970, primarily in television where he helmed episodes of such series as The Waltons, Starsky and Hutch, and In the Heat of the Night, based on the 1967 Poitier film.

Poitier made two other films with Kramer which featured controversial racial themes. In Pressure Point (1962) - produced by Kramer but directed by Hubert Cornfield - he is a psychiatrist who must deal with a rabidly white supremacist patient (Bobby Darin). In Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (1967), Poitier plays a highly educated black doctor who wants to marry the daughter of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.

Susan Hayward, who was up for an Oscar for her role as condemned murderess Barbara Graham in I Want to Live (1958) the year The Defiant Ones was released, took advantage of the film's publicity by posing handcuffed to her director, Robert Wise, in ads for her film's nominations. She won the Academy Award.

When Oscar nominations came out, it was discovered that Douglas was a pseudonym for blacklisted writer Nedrick Young, who had refused to name names to the House Un-American Activities Committee. According to the Academy's rules, Smith's name could be on the ballot but not the alleged "communist" Young. In January 1959, shortly before the awards were voted on, the Academy announced it was revoking its anticommunist rule because "experience has proved the by-law to be unworkable and impractical to administer and enforce." Gossip columnist (and notorious right-winger) Hedda Hopper was furious over the change and wrote that "since our Academy now makes it legal for Commie writers to receive Oscars, some past winners, who are just as bitter about this as I, tell me they'll return theirs." But no past winner did. Academy officials, however, told Young if he won he could take home the Oscar only if he promised he wouldn't embarrass the Academy on national television by mentioning the blacklist. When the two writers won the award, Best Director loser Kramer remarked, "At least we beat the blacklist."

MEMORABLE QUOTES from THE DEFIANT ONES

LOU GANS (Whit Bissell): "It's just like runnin' rabbits."
SHERIFF (Theodore Bikel): "These are men."

EDITOR (Lawrence Dobkin): "How come they chained a white man to a black?"
SHERIFF: "The warden's got a sense of humor. He said not to worry about catching them. They'll probably kill each other before they go five miles."

JOKER (Tony Curtis): "You keep sayin' thanks. I hate that word thanks."

JOKER: "You callin' me a weasel?"
CULLEN (Sidney Poitier): "No, I'm callin' you a white man."

JOKER: "Everybody winds up alone. Not just you, everybody."

CULLEN: "I ain't gettin' mad, Joker. I been mad all my natural life."

JOKER: You can't lynch me, I'm a white man.