Both Otto Preminger and Marilyn Monroe were forced to do the film against their will due to contractual obligations. They both expressed their frustration over the script, which they considered below par. However, the film was a box office hit upon its release and remains a popular classic western.
While most of the cast and crew went to lunch, Marilyn Monroe preferred to go underneath the set, between all the pillars and dust, to find Bandit the raccoon. She would put him in her lap, pet him, and talk to his owner Ralph Helfer about animals and horses.
During post-production, Otto Preminger departed for Europe, leaving editor Louis R. Loeffler and Stanley Rubin to complete the film. Jean Negulesco was called in to film a few retakes. The dailies reconfirmed Rubin's belief that Preminger had been the wrong choice for the project. He felt the director had failed to capture the Western aura, had ignored key elements in the plot, and had badly directed action sequences, leaving them looking staged and static. In several cases, studio and location shots didn't match.
During the difficult shoot, Otto Preminger had to contend with frequent rain, Robert Mitchum's heavy drinking, and an injury to Marilyn Monroe's ankle that kept her off the set for several days and ultimately put her in a cast. Young Tommy Rettig seemed to be the director's sole source of solace. He respected the boy's professionalism and appreciated the rapport he developed with Monroe, which often helped keep the actress on an even keel. When Natasha Lytess, Monroe's acting's coach, began to interfere with Rettig's performance, thereby undermining his confidence, Preminger let the cast and crew know about her behavior. Preminger was delighted to find that they finally began to support him in his efforts to remove her from the set.
As the studio caravan motored to location near Banff, traffic was halted after a gasoline truck ahead of them exploded. Members of the company and Marilyn Monroe's boyfriend Joe DiMaggio organized a search party to find the driver, who had run into the woods, his clothes on fire. They found the badly burned driver and rushed him to the hospital.