Alfred Hitchcock and producer John Houseman became lifelong friends after Houseman was assigned by David O. Selznick to supervise the production of Saboteur when it was still a Selznick project. While the director was making Shadow of a Doubt (1943), the FBI came to question him about Houseman, whose strong anti-fascist sentiments had him under suspicion as a communist. Hitchcock told them: "I know of three great Americans: Washington, Lincoln, and Houseman." Houseman was born in Romania and raised in England.

Hitchcock and Norman Lloyd also became friends on this project. Lloyd appeared in one other Hitchcock film, Spellbound (1945), and later produced two of Hitchcock's TV series and directed and acted in several episodes of both.

Saboteur went slightly over budget ($3,000 – not enough to prevent Hitchcock from getting the bonus his producer promised). It was edited quickly for an early Spring 1942 release and became a big hit. By the beginning of July that year, it had already earned 170 percent of its gross cost. In its initial release, the $750,000 picture made more than $1.5 million.

Hitchcock hated the previews imposed on him by the studios and considered audience response cards to be idiotic methods for shaping a film. After one such screening, the director muttered one of the lines from the picture, delivered by the fascist leader character: "The great masses, the moron millions."

Saboteur premiered in Washington, DC, in late April 1942 and went into wide release shortly after. It was not seen in most of Europe until after the war.

Although Hitchcock was not pleased about having to settle for Robert Cummings as his lead, he did use the actor again, in Dial M for Murder (1954).

Hitchcock biographer Donald Spoto has noted the linking device of fire in this film. The saboteur (aptly named Frye) sets fire to the airplane factory and hands a victim a canister of gasoline to fuel it; the blind man invites Barry to warm himself by the fire; to escape the New York mansion, Barry sets off the sprinkler system, which brings the fire department; the final confrontation takes place on Miss Liberty's torch.

Totally immersed in working on the Saboteur script, Hitchcock missed his daughter Pat's Broadway debut in a play directed by Dudley Digges, who had replaced Auriol Lee. On the way back to New York after completing her role as Isobel in Hitchcock's previous picture, Suspicion (1941), Lee was killed in a car accident in Kansas.

Following his big break on this picture ("I always consider Saboteur as my first reasonably important film."), associate art director Robert Boyle went on to become a prominent art director-production designer with four Academy Award® nominations, including one for Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959). The two also worked together on Shadow of a Doubt (1943), The Birds (1963), and Marnie (1964).

Boyle later related a story about working with the director on storyboards for Saboteur when a studio employee wearing an air marshal's helmet broke in and announced that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. When he left, Boyle said, Hitchcock asked, "Why was he wearing that funny hat?"

Saboteur was co-writer Joan Harrison's fourth and final script for Hitchcock, after winning Oscar nominations for Rebecca (1940) and Foreign Correspondent (1940). She went on to become a noted producer in film and television, including three of Hitchcock's popular television series of the 1950s and 60s.

Cinematographer Joseph Valentine later shot Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and Rope (1948) and won an Academy Award for his work on Joan of Arc (1948), starring Hitchcock favorite Ingrid Bergman. He died at the age of 48, a few months after collecting his award.

The ranch hand who lassoes Kane off the back of a horse on the Tobin ranch was played by Kermit Maynard, brother of (and sometimes stand-in for) cowboy star Ken Maynard.

Musical director Charles Previn, who also worked with Hitchcock on Shadow of a Doubt, is the father of composer André Previn.

"He should have had a better tailor." – screenwriter and frequent Hitchcock collaborator Ben Hecht's first remark after watching the film, according to Norman Lloyd, regarding the torn sleeve that dooms the villain to a fatal fall.

"I felt that it was cluttered with too many ideas.... I think we covered too much ground. ... The script lacks discipline...It goes to show that a mass of ideas, however good they are, is not sufficient to create a successful picture. They've got to be carefully presented with a constant awareness of the shape as a whole." – Alfred Hitchcock in an interview with Francois Truffaut in 1962.

Hitchcock loved Dorothy Parker's script touches for Saboteur, particularly the scene with the circus freaks, but thought they were too subtle and mostly overlooked by the audience.

Memorable Quotes from SABOTEUR

MAC (Murray Alper): I've been thinkin' for long time I'm gonna get out of this truckin' game.
BARRY (Robert Cummings): Why don't you?
MAC: One of my neighbors told my wife it's stylish to eat three meals a day.

BARRY: A man like you can't last in a country like this.

TOBIN (Otto Kruger): Very pretty speech – youthful, passionate, idealistic. Need I remind you that you are the fugitive from justice, not I. I'm a prominent citizen, widely respected. You are an obscure workman wanted for committing an extremely unpopular crime. Now which of us do you think the police will believe?

TOBIN: You have all the makings of an outstanding bore.

PHILLIP MARTIN (Vaughan Glazer): I have always thought that [hitchhiking] was the best way to learn about this country and the surest test of the American heart.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Would you mind not having any further quotations from the police? Their remarks are always so expected. They kill conversation.

PHILLIP MARTIN: I have my own ideas about my duties as a citizen. They sometimes involve disregarding the law.

MAJOR (Billy Curtis): No vote! I'm against voting.
BONES (Pedro de Cordoba): Fascist.

PAT (Priscilla Lane): Welcome to Soda City.
BARRY: The heart of the bicarbonate belt.

FREEMAN (Alan Baxter): When I was a child, I had long golden curls. People used to stop on the street to admire me.

Compiled by Rob Nixon