Affair in Trinidad

The production is credited to the Beckworth Corporation, named for Rita Hayworth and her daughter Rebecca Welles, but Beckworth wasn't an actual production company. It was a tax dodge set up by Hayworth and Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn to allow her fee for the film to be considered a capital gain rather than a salary, and therefore taxed at a lower rate.

Rita Hayworth practiced hard to try to do her own singing, but finally musical director Morris Stoloff hired Jo Ann Greer to dub Rita's voice. Greer and Hayworth worked well together and she later dubbed Rita in Miss Sadie Thompson (1953) and Pal Joey (1957).

In the time period that the story was set, America in fact maintained two naval bases in Trinidad, one at the western peninsula called Chagaramas and the other in the east of the country, called Wallerfield. They were closed in 1962, the year the country gained independence from Great Britain. There is still a lot of evidence of their presence to this day--airstrips, the deep-water harbor and several still-standing buildings, among others. Chagaramas is now host to a thriving boating industry. It is well known in the sailing world as a shelter during the hurricane season, and hundreds of yachts and private craft are anchored there every year. It is considered to be out of the Caribbean's hurricane belt.

The song "Rum and Coca Cola" by The Andrews Sisters was originally a calypso song composed and performed by a Trinidad calypso band in the mid-1940s. At that time the American military maintained two bases in Trinidad. The song is about the soldiers from these bases and how a mother and daughter provided "pleasure" for the "Yankee dollar". Actually, if one walked around Port of Spain--Trinidad's capital city--during this period it was a common sight to see American soldiers and sailors with local women at hotels and bars.

The distant island seen under the opening credits is actually Moorea as seen from Tahiti, 11 miles away.