Trivia for
No Way Out (1950) More at IMDbPro »

• Richard Widmark was apparently very uncomfortable with some of the racist comments his character, Ray Biddle, made, especially given his friendship with Sidney Poitier. As a result, after some of the takes involving particularly venomous remarks, Widmark actually apologized to Poitier for the remarks his character had made.
  
  
• Sidney Poitier lied to director Joseph L. Mankiewicz and told him he was 27 years old, when actually he was only 22.
  
  
• The poster art was done by Saul Bass. It is his first film credit.
  
  
• Lesser Samuels' original story was bid on by Warner Brothers, Paramount, Columbia, and Universal-International in addition to Fox, who signed him in January 1949 to a ten week contract to write the screenplay.
  
  
• Fox contract producers Otto Preminger, Sol Siegel, and Nunnally Johnson all wanted to do the film, but studio head Darryl F. Zanuck produced it personally.
  
  
• It was the idea of screenplay writer Philip Yordan to depict scenes showing the doctor's family inside their home.
  
  
• In the original version of the story Luther was hideously slaughtered, but Zanuck changed his mind because he believed that that ending would leave the audience with a "feeling of utter futility."
  
  
• Although many credit this as Sidney Poitier's film debut, he had previously made three short films for the Signal Corps.
  
  
• Richard Widmark, who became good friends with Poitier, apologized to the actor on numerous occasions for having to mouth his character's racial epithets.
  
  
• Zanuck wanted to schedule the release of "No Way Out" a year after "Pinky," a 1949 movie about racial prejudice, because he wanted "a gradual buildup of audience receptivity."
  
  
• When the black actors who were part of the race riot scene found out that they were getting paid less than their white equivalents, they protested until accommodations were made.
  
  
• "No Way Out" marks the first screen appearance of Ossie Davis and the first on-screen teaming of Davis and wife Ruby Dee.
  
  

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