Ranked fifth best picture of 1940 by Film Daily's national poll of critics.
Reportedly it took forty minutes to dress Bette Davis each day in her historically accurate costumes with several layers of under garments and corsets to help her maintain the correct posture and movement
Reportedly, Bette Davis had an affair with director Anatole Litvak while he was still married to Miriam Hopkins. This led to a life-long mutual hatred between the two actresses and added to their on-screen chemistry in their two films together, The Old Maid and Old Acquaintance.
The bed in the Duchesse's bedroom is the same bed used in Gone with the Wind in Scarlett's bedroom, after Scarlett has married Rhett. Ironically, Barbara O'Neil played Scarlett's mother in that movie.
The budget for this film was ridiculously high for a Warner Brothers production; Warner Brothers was famed for releasing films with low production costs. Jack Warner wanted a film that would be similar to "Gone with the Wind" and spared no expense in trying to achieve his goal.
The original cut of the film was reportedly 190 minutes long (just over three hours), the final cut was shaved down to 141 minutes. There is no surviving footage from the content that was eventually edited out.
The Scandal revolving around the case of Choiseul-Praslin's murder of his wife was one of the contributing factors to the 1848 Revolution.
There are over 150 different paintings featuring in the movie. Set building and set decoration took nearly 70% of the film budget
Two of Bette Davis' and Charles Boyer's scenes are filmed with fires burning notably in the background with a gap between them so the flames are evident; this was deliberate to symbolize the passion 'burning' between them.
Upon their first meeting, the Duchesse de Praslin asks Henriette how old she is, revealing the answer to be 25-years-old; the Duchesse considers this "so young". Amusingly enough in real life, Barbara O'Neil was twenty-nine years old at the time of filming, while Bette Davis was two years older.
Warner Bros. erected 67 sets for this movie, a record at the time.
Was June Lockhart's second film, and first credited role. Out of the four children starring in the movie, she was the only one to continue acting in to adulthood.
While auditioning actresses for the movie, Boyer graciously offered to stand on a box to tower over actresses who were uncomfortable by being taller than he was.