Trivia

The working title was Totò Tovarich.

Peppino De Filippo stated in an interview that most of the gags were improvised. In particular the scene when Peppino and Antonio ( Totò ) are in bed was totally ad-libbed.

The censorship initially decided to forbid this movie for people under 16 years of age. After the deletion of a dancing scene of Janette ( Angela Luce ), which was considered too provocative, the ban was removed.

Awarded at the Comedy Cinema Festival of Bordighera in 1960 with the Golden Olive Tree.

In the 1950s there were a lot of Italian soldiers believed dead who finally came home from the Russian campaign, and many of them found their wives with a new family. However, the real story inspiring the movie happened in Naples in January 1959, when former soldier Umberto Irace came home from Germany after 16 years, letting his wife Concetta and the concierge collapse, believing to have seen a ghost. Irace was captured by Germans in 1943, short after having married and with a pregnant wife. The woman worked then as a maid in order to support her daughter, and obtained her husband's war pension, after she had searched for him for years among the former prisoners coming back home after the end of the war. In 1949 Irace was declared dead, but he actually wasn't: after having been a prisoner in the Vergaten lager, he was released when Soviets occuped Berlin. By his comeback he refused to tell what he did in the meantime in Germany, adducing personal reasons: it is known that the moved to Stuttgart in 1952, where he asked the papers in order to travel back to Italy, as he did only 7 years later. The differences between this real story and the one of the movie are the provenience of the former prisoner (Germany instead of Russia), the presence of a daughter instead of a new husband (Concetta Irace didn't remarry and had to work hard, while Amalia di Cosimo had a more comfortable life beside new husband Peppino Castagnano and didn't need to get a job, but had no children). In both cases the veteran was taken abroad shortly after the wedding (in the case of Antonio di Cosimo it was even the same day), but while Umberto Irace was taken as prisoner by Germans, di Cosimo was forced to join the Italian army in the Russian campaign. In both cases the veteran's explanation at the comeback resulted confused: in the real story, Irace refused to tell details about his after-war years, while di Cosimo's tales result so foolish that there is the doubt he hadn't been really at war.