Michael Caines first attempt at an American accent. He was taught by Vivien Leigh. She told him to memorize the phrase "Four-door Ford".
Faye Dunaway's film debut.
A disagreement on the set caused actress Faye Dunaway to buy her way out of her existing five picture contract with director Otto Preminger.
Film critic Rex Reed interviewed Otto Preminger and the cast during the filming in the summer of 1966 and was given a bit part in the film as a farmer.
Footage from this film of a young Michael Caine was later used in the film Austin Powers in Goldmember.
National Catholic Office of Motion Pictures gave the movie a "C" (condemned) rating, saying "superficial and patronizing in its treatment of racial attitudes and tensions, this melodramatic depiction of life in a small Southern town during the 1940s is also prurient and demeaning in its approach to sex."
One of the films included in "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (and how they got that way)" by Harry Medved and Randy Lowell.
Then-Governor George Wallace refused permission to allow Otto Preminger to shoot the film in his state of Alabama.
Was the first major motion picture film with black actor to ever be shot on location in the South. The cast and crew received death threats from the Ku Klux Klan, had their car tires slashed, and had to be protected by armed state troopers.