The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

One of Gregory Peck's movie children was played by Portland Mason, who was the daughter of actor James Mason, and an Italian delivery boy was played by Johnny Crawford a few years before he would achieve fame on the popular TV Western, The Rifleman (1958).

It is believed by some that Tom shifting his car into reverse then driving away forward at the end of the film is a goof. However, the car is a manual transmission Ford with a column-shifted 3 speed manual transmission with an unsynchronized first gear. A quirk of that style transmission is that at a standing stop, getting the transmission into 1st gear when the engine is running is easiest if the operator first abruptly lifts the shift lever from neutral to place the transmission into second gear, then back down into first. This prevents clash (grinding) of the unsynchronized first gear. Drivers of the era, including Tom Rath, would have been well familiar with this technique.

Once it fades in, the 20th Century Fox logo (set to the film's dramatic opening credits music, rather than the traditional Fox fanfare) appears in a slightly smaller CinemaScope windowbox, slowly panning to normal size (correctly fitting the CinemaScope screen) before fadeout.

Featured in The Fifties (1997)