Bad Day at Black Rock originated as a short story by Howard Breslin with full-color illustrations by Robert Fawcett. Titled "Bad Time at Honda", it was published by The American Magazine in January 1947. It was adapted into a script by Don McGuire and pitched to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production head Dore Schary, who was known for championing films that addressed social problems. Schary had previously produced Go for Broke! (1951), based on the exploits of the segregated Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
Schary acquired the film rights for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but he hired Millard Kaufman to rewrite McGuire's script. The producers were worried about the title because "Bad Time at Honda" was similar to Hondo, recently made with John Wayne. Kaufman suggested changing the name of the town to Black Rock, after a real town in Arizona. Kaufman finished the script in fall 1953.
Although Spencer Tracy was 54 and much older than the platoon leader in the original story, Schary wanted Tracy to play the lead role. John Sturges was hired as director in June 1954, and shooting began the following month near Lone Pine, California, where the small town set had been quickly constructed. Just before shooting began, an indecisive Tracy tried to back out of the picture. Schary made clear that he was willing to sue the actor if he quit the film. Bad Day at Black Rock was Tracy's final film for MGM, with the exception of How the West Was Won (1963), for which he supplied the narration.
Budget for the film was $1.3 million and it was shot in color using Cinemascope because Schary thought that widescreen would emphasize the menace of the isolated town. Temperatures on location were over 100 °F (38 °C). On August 9, the cast and crew relocated to the MGM studio lot in Culver City. André Previn was hired to write the score.
Although the film is essentially a crime drama set in 1945, it is recognized as a neo-Western, with strong links to the revisionist Western genre. The premiere was at Loew's 72nd Street Theatre in New York City on December 8, 1954. The film was released nationally in January 1955. According to MGM records, it earned US$1,966,000 in the US and Canada, and $1,822,000 elsewhere, making the studio a profit of $947,000
The plot of the movie—a small western desert town hiding a guilty secret, or protecting a local person from outside law enforcement officers—was borrowed many times by US television crime shows. Detective and crime series as diverse as Cannon, Kojak, The A-Team and Remington Steele, among others, each had an episode similar to the plot of Bad Day at Black Rock. In the case of Kojak and Remington Steele, the film is actually mentioned in the dialogue of the episodes.