Trivia / For Whom the Bell Tolls

• Banned in China: The film was banned in Spain until 1978.
• Creator Breakdown: Maureen Stapleton had one during the Playhouse 90 TV film. She was so afraid of guns that she didn't show up to filming, so producer Fred Coe personally forced her from her apartment, wearing nothing but a blanket, so she could finish filming.
• Disowned Adaptation: Ernest Hemingway was not shy about his hatred of the movie.
• Dyeing for Your Art:
  • Ingrid Bergman cut her hair short to play Maria. As a result, she stopped producers from replacing "As Time Goes By" from Casablanca; they wanted to re-shoot the scene with a different song, but the hair would have created a continuity problem.
  • Vera Zorina had been cast as Maria before she was replaced with Ingrid Bergman, and had already cut her hair too.
  • A brown horse was the only one able to do the stunt at the end of the film, so they painted it gray to match Gary Cooper's stunt horse.
• Fake Nationality:
  • Almost none of the actors in the the 1943 film are Hispanic, much less Spaniards. Ingrid Bergman (Maria) is Swedish, Akim Tamiroff (Pablo) is Armenian, Katina Paxinou◊ (Pilar) is Greek, Vladimir Sokoloff (Anselmo) is Russian, Mikhail Rasumny (Rafael) is Ukranian, Victor Varconi (Primitivo) is Hungarian, and Joseph Calleia (El Sordo) is Maltese.
  • The Playhouse 90 version had Jewish-Americans Nehemiah Persoff and Eli Wallach as Pablo and Rafael, and Irish Catholic American Maureen Stapleton as Pilar.
• The Other Marty: Norwegian ballerina-turned-actress Vera Zorina was originally cast as Maria. After a week's shooting, she was replaced with Ingrid Bergman after she was deemed too refined to properly portray her. Ernest Hemingway had been lobbying for Ingrid to play the part anyway.
• The Red Stapler: Ingrid's short hair, for various reasons, be it war rationing or Ingrid's star factor, was reported to be a hit with hairdressers. The "Maria cut" might be considered to be a precursor to the spiky-curly bobs of The '50s.
• Referenced by...:
  • "The world is a great place, and is worth fighting for", part of the final chapter is quoted at the end of Se7en. Due to the dark world of the movie, it made Morgan Freeman character say that "he agreed with the second part".
  • In Insecto Nocturno, Hemingway is quoted saying that "Spanish was the language of blasphemies, filled with the most profane of insults". This is a nod to chapter 27 of the book.
    The captain, standing in the open beside the boulder, commenced to shout filth at the hilltop. There is no language so filthy as Spanish. There are words for all the vile words in English and there are other words and expressions that are used only in countries where blasphemy keeps pace with the austerity of religion.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Henry Fonda and Sterling Hayden were considered for Robert Jordan.
  • Paulette Goddard tested for Maria. Vivien Leigh and Susan Hayward were also considered.

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