W.S. Van Dyke took over the direction of the movie from Robert B. Sinclair, who became ill shortly after shooting began. Van Dyke was in the Marines, but was granted a 14-day leave to finish the picture. Neither Sinclair nor Van Dyke was available for re-takes, which were then directed by Richard Thorpe.
Joy Davidman (later the wife of William Lindsay Gresham, and later still the wife of C.S. Lewis) worked on an early version of the script before the task was handed over to Christopher Isherwood. Davidman was employed as a scriptwriter by MGM for approximately six months in 1939. However, none of her scripts was used.
Ingrid Bergman was loaned to MGM by David O. Selznick and George Sanders was loaned out by Twentieth Century-Fox for this film.
In a scene in which Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders are together at a table dining, Sanders tells Bergman that he can tell what many of the other diners around them are thinking - and is clearly about to begin, but is stopped from doing so by an edit to a different angle where they continue their conversation - clearly after he would have told her.
In his autobiography 'Confessions of a Professional Cad" George Sanders discusses acting with Montgomery in Rage in Heaven. At one point Montgomery took Sanders aside and warned him ""I'm not going to act in this film" When Sanders asking what he meant Montgomery explained that MGM had forced him into the part and he had decided to retaliate by not giving a performance, merely reading his lines. While some reviewers were critical of Montgomery's detached and remote performance, others thought him brilliantly original in the part.