Director Fritz Lang and cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca developed a revolutionary dolly for the camera that allowed for sustained tracking shots and intimate close-ups while shooting this film. Lang preferred the practice of tracking into a close-up shot of an actor as opposed to cutting to a close-up in editing. He believed the tracking close-up captured more of the actors’ intimacy and emotions.
When it starts to rain as Harry and Norah are driving to his apartment, he activates the automatic roof on his convertible. At the time, only one American car had a retractable roof in production. It was built by the American Playboy Automobile Company starting in 1947 and only 97 were made before the company went bankrupt in 1951. Peugeot also produced 470 convertibles with retractable roofs starting in 1935. The first Amercian car with a motorized retractable top was the 1939 Plymouth. Ford began mass-producing convertibles with retractable roofs beginning in 1957 when it introduced the Fairlane 500 Skyliner.
Casey Mayo works for the Los Angeles Chronicle, which is the same newspaper that often appears in Perry Mason (1957), starring Raymond Burr. The price for a copy of the Chronicle rose from seven cents in this movie to ten cents in Perry Mason.
George Reeves gives the police department’s phone number as “MIchigan 5211”, back in the days when telephone exchanges had names, such as Exbrook, Granite, Klondike. The first two letters of the exchange name, usually capitalized when written, corresponded to the first two numbers after the area code of a current-day U.S. telephone number. Many numbers of the era had 5 digits instead of 4; e.g., “BEechwood 4-5789” (the Marvelettes song) or “PEnnsylvania 6-5000” (Glen Miller Orchestra).
Anne Baxter was an American actress, star of Hollywood films, Broadway productions, and television series. She won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, and was nominated for an Emmy. Wikipedia
Raymond William Stacy Burr was a Canadian actor known for his lengthy Hollywood film career and his title roles in television dramas Perry Mason and Ironside. Burr’s early acting career included roles on Broadway, radio, television, and film, usually as the villain. Wikipedia