Quo Vadis (1951 Film) - Production Notes

Production Notes

• The film was originally cast in 1949 with Elizabeth Taylor as Lygia and Gregory Peck as Marcus Vinicius. When the production changed hands the following year, the roles went to Deborah Kerr and Robert Taylor. Elizabeth Taylor was also a Christian prisoner in arena, but uncredited.
• Sophia Loren briefly appears uncredited as a slave. The Italian actor Bud Spencer also had an uncredited extra role as a Praetorian Guardsman.
• The film holds a record for the most costumes used in one movie; 32,000.
• The film was shot on location in Rome and in the Cinecittà Studios.
• Peter Ustinov relates in his autobiography, Dear Me, that director Mervyn LeRoy summarized the manner in which he envisioned Ustinov should play the Emperor Nero, very salaciously, as "Nero...He plays with himself, nights." Ustinov, getting the director's gist, thereafter notes that this depraved manner was the basis of his creation of the character of Nero for the film.
• At one point in the film Nero shows his court a scale model illustrating his plans for rebuilding Rome. This model was originally constructed by Mussolini's government for a 1937 exhibition of Roman architecture—the film's producers borrowed it from the postwar Italian government.