The Divers are based on real-life couple Gerald and Sara Murphy, friends and patrons of the famous, including the author of this story, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Poet Archibald Macleish once said of the Murphys that "there was a shine to life wherever they were".
The first plans for a screen adaption dates back to the 1930s, when F. Scott Fitzgerald wanted to make it a Norma Shearer vehicle. Producer and Shearer's husband Irving Thalberg voted against it.
The title, "Tender Is the Night," comes from John Keats' 1819 poem, "Ode to a Nightingale."