Anthony Zerbe's film debut.
Jack Lemmon was the owner of Jalem Productions, which co-produced many of his films as well as Cool Hand Luke.
Ralph Waite's film debut.
Bette Davis was first offered the role of Luke's mother, but refused the bit part.
Donn Pearce who wrote the novel on which the movie is based, spent 2 years on a chain gang for safe-breaking. Pearce makes a cameo appearance in the movie as a convict named Sailor.
A Southern prison camp was built for this movie just north of Stockton, California. A dozen buildings were constructed, including a barracks, mess hall, warden's quarters, guard shack, and dog kennels.
According to Jack Lemmon's son, Chris, in an Icons Radio Interview Lemmon was originally selected to play the part of Luke, but Lemmon, reading the script, saw that Paul Newman would be better. So Lemmon decided to produce it.
Actor Morgan Woodward, who played Boss Godfrey, a.k.a. "The Man With No Eyes," remained in character during breaks between scenes. He would sit in his chair, still wearing his mirrored sunglasses, and not speak to anyone.
First film of James Gammon.
In the "road-tarring" sequence, the actors actually blacktopped a mile-long stretch of highway for the county.
Luke's prison number (37) is a reference to the Bible - Luke 1:37. ("For with God nothing shall be impossible.")
The lines "What we've got here is... failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it... well, he gets it. I don't like it any more than you men." can be heard in the intro of the song "Civil War" by Guns N' Roses. They would use audio of the first line again during the song "Madagascar" on the 2008 album "Chinese Democracy."
The movie's line "What we've got here is failure to communicate." was voted as the #11 movie quote by the American Film Institute
The music cue where Luke gets the men to work faster on the road was used later for many years by many ABC television stations as their "Eyewitness News" theme.
The opening scene, where Luke is cutting off the heads of parking meters, was filmed in Lodi, California. After the filming, the city did not replace the meters, and for many years afterward, you could go there and see a block long row of metal posts, sans meters.
Truckloads of Spanish moss were shipped from Louisiana to the set in California to hang in the trees around the prison.
When the famous line "What we've got here is a failure to communicate" is no originally spoken by the Captain (Strother Martin) he omits the "a"; but when Luke (Paul Newman) repeats the line at the end while in the church, he says "a failure to communicate." Thus, the line can be quoted correctly both with and without the "a".
While passing by the prison camp set, a San Joaquin County building inspector thought it was a recently constructed migrant worker's complex, and posted "condemned" notices on the buildings for not being up to code.