It was Vernon Duke who suggested Bob Wright and Chet Forrest use the music of Aleksandr Borodin as a basis for their score.
The orange seller (the man who Hajj (Howard Keel) holds down and calls the "father of none and son of many") was played by Jamie Farr, best known for his role as Corporal Maxwell Q. Klinger on M*A*S*H (1972).
Because the production ran a few days behind schedule, co-director Stanley Donen had to take over for the last three or four days of the production, plus one day of additional shooting, after director Vincente Minnelli left for Europe to begin work on his next film, Lust for Life (1956).
The original Broadway production of "Kismet" opened at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City on December 3, 1953, ran for five hundred eighty-three performances, and won the 1954 Tony Award for Best Musical.
Howard Keel opened the 1947 London West End production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "Oklahoma!" following appearances in the New York companies of "Oklahoma!" and "Carousel." By 1949, MGM needed a male musical lead to counter Warner Brothers' singing star Gordon MacRae and Howard Keel made his MGM debut as Frank Butler in Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun (1950) with Betty Hutton. In 1953, MGM loaned Keel to Warner Brothers to play Wild Bill Hickock with Doris Day in Calamity Jane (1953) which was Warners' answer to Annie Get Your Gun (1950). Kismet (1955) marked Keel's last film musical role, after which he returned to stage musicals such as "Saratoga" and "Ambassdor."