Richard Gere balked at shooting the ending of the film, in which Zack arrives at Paula's factory wearing his naval dress whites and carries her off the factory floor; he thought that wouldn't work because it was too sentimental. Director Taylor Hackford agreed with Gere until, during a rehearsal, the extras playing the workers began to cheer and cry. When Gere saw the scene later, with the music added ("Up Where We Belong"), he said it gave him chills. Gere is now convinced Hackford made the right decision.

Producer Don Simpson unsuccessfully demanded "Up Where We Belong" be cut from An Officer and a Gentleman, saying, "The song is no good. It isn't a hit." He reportedly said of Warnes, "She has a sweet voice, but she'll never have a hit song, and this definitely isn't it." (This overlooked the fact that Warnes had already had a hit in 1977 with "Right Time of the Night" and had another modest hit in 1979 with the song It Goes Like It Goes in the film Norma Rae, which won an Oscar. It was proven even more wrong when Warnes recorded the huge hit "I've Had The Time of My Life" only a few years later with Bill Medley for the 1987 film Dirty Dancing.) Simpson even made a bet with the film's soundtrack supervisor that the song would flop and paid off his loss after the Oscars, where he still insisted the song was rotten and that it should never have become successful.

However, the American Top 40 radio stations disagreed with Simpson's comments, as the single, released by Island Records in 1982, hit #1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 on November 6, 1982 and held the top chart position for three consecutive weeks, also reaching number 7 in the UK Singles Chart. It was certified Platinum by the RIAA for sales of over two million copies in the United States.

...
Wikipedia