 When Clift withdrew for reasons of health, he was replaced by Audie Murphy and Olivier then left the project.Graham Greene had been a war correspondent in Indochina, and was critical of the growing American involvement there.By making the character of "Pyle" an aid worker and private citizen and not a representative of the American government, and by focusing on the love triangle aspects of the story instead of the geo-politics of the war, producer-director-writer Joseph L. Mankiewicz significantly diluted the impact of Greene's story, which led the author to disavow the film.