FILM · 1974 · USA
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
58 archived facts 6 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (58)
- #001
The opening sequence was designed as a tribute to The Wizard of Oz (1939).
- #002
According to Martin Scorsese, Alice and Tommy walking off with a large sign reading "Monterey" in front of them was not planned. But when cinematographer Kent L. Wakeford alerted him during the shot, Scorsese noticed it and was very excited, instructing Wakeford not to let it leave the frame.
- #003
Ellen Burstyn improvised the "I don't sing with my ass" routine, supposedly based on her own experiences in show business.
- #004
Diane Ladd's daughter, Laura Dern, can be seen in the final diner scene: the little blonde girl with glasses sitting at the end of the counter eating an ice cream cone. As Dern would recall years later, after the nineteenth take and exactly that many cones consumed, director Martin Scorsese told Ladd that her daughter would have to become an actress to do that without throwing up.
- #005
According to Martin Scorsese, the purpose of the highly stylized opening was to find a way to represent how Alice sees her past. "In her mind Monterey is a fantasy, a pure illusion. So I shot a flashback as if it were a Hollywood film made on a soundstage (around the late 1940s). Unreal. Because that's where Alice is."
- #006
The restaurant this film was based on is located at 1747 NW Grand Avenue in Phoenix, Arizona. The restaurant was once known as Mel's Diner, later as Pat's Diner. It recently changed again and is Mel's Diner once more (as of May 2023).
- #007
According to Ellen Burstyn, Warner Bros. executives wanted to cut the opening scene in which Alice performs as a little girl in Monterey, but Martin Scorsese told them that if they did, they would have to take his name off the picture.
- #008
As is common when casting child actors, Alfred Lutter III's personality contained many of the qualities the producers were looking for in the character of Tommy. Martin Scorsese stated that the pointless dog-shooting story was improvised into the script after a long van ride following a shoot, during which Alfred kept repeating the story to Martin. Martin wanted to create in the film the feeling of being a captive audience subjected to a merciless retelling of a ridiculous story, so they improvised it into the script during Tommy's retelling of it to his mother and later to David.
- #009
At the beginning of the film, Alice promises Tommy that she will take him to Monterey, California before his birthday. The film's final shot shows Alice and Tommy walking along a road in Tucson toward a large sign for a shopping center called "Monterey Village." The shopping center is at the intersection of Speedway and Wilmot in Tucson.
- #010
When Ellen Burstyn won the Oscar for Best Actress, she was unable to attend the Oscars that night to accept it in person. She asked Martin Scorsese to accept the award on her behalf. She also asked Scorsese to thank her after accepting the Oscar.
- #011
The first cut ran three hours and sixteen minutes. Martin Scorsese reduced it to just under two hours for release, losing entire scenes and characters. He was especially unhappy about losing much of the Socorro sequence, which he believed would have turned Alice's husband into a more fleshed-out character. He wanted that part of the film to run about a third of the film's total length, but preview audiences grew bored with it and felt the film didn't really begin until she and Tommy hit the road.
- #012
Martin Scorsese later said that they occasionally had problems with the owners of the buildings they were shooting at, but that Kris Kristofferson was always able to smooth things over and buy the crew more time to finish its work.
- #013
The opening sequence, in which Alice is shown as a little girl in Monterey, was the last thing shot, filmed on the old Columbia Pictures soundstages on Gower Street in Hollywood, California.
- #014
Martin Scorsese said that one of his favorite lead actors to direct was Kris Kristofferson, because he represented the strong, silent, masculine hero whom Scorsese had always admired but rarely worked with over the course of his career.
- #015
Martin Scorsese was impressed by Ellen Burstyn's background at the Actors Studio. With actors and actresses trained in New York City such as himself, Diane Ladd, Harvey Keitel and Lelia Goldoni among the cast, he felt they could work with improvisations and incorporate them into the script. He said the process was inspired by John Cassavetes's films.
- #016
Martin Scorsese said that Alfred Lutter III improvised the film's final line, "Mom, I can't breathe."
- #017
Martin Scorsese told Kris Kristofferson not to worry about the acting directions in the script and to think about how he himself would say it. He said he did everything to boost Kristofferson's confidence, including telling him compliments other people had said about him.
- #018
The day after she won the Oscar, Ellen Burstyn received a congratulatory phone call from Jackie Gleason. In her early days as Erica Dean (one of several stage names), she had worked on his show as a "Glea Girl," one of the beautiful faces who introduced various segments of the program. "I haven't heard from him in twenty years," she told Earl Wilson of The New York Post.
- #019
At roughly the 73rd minute of the film, Kris Kristofferson enters the restaurant and sits down at a table in the back.
- #020
Ellen Burstyn often drew on her own experiences, including her relationship with her son Jefferson Burstyn, who traveled with her wherever she worked and was a young teenager during the production. In the opening scenes set in Socorro, New Mexico, he played the neighbor's son and Tommy's best friend. She told Martin Scorsese about the conversations and events between herself and her son, and about what happened in front of the camera with Alfred Lutter III, and these were incorporated into various scenes.
- #021
Harvey Keitel improvised the part about the scorpion hanging around his neck.
- #022
Ellen Burstyn brought the project to Martin Scorsese and hired him to direct it. Scorsese then surrounded himself with an extraordinarily supportive crew of strong and very well-connected women, among them his girlfriend Sandra Weintraub (daughter of producer Fred Weintraub) as associate producer; film editor Marcia Lucas (George Lucas's wife); and production designer Toby Carr Rafelson (wife of director and producer Bob Rafelson).
- #023
Shirley MacLaine turned down the role of Alice Hyatt. She admitted she regretted it.
- #024
Barbra Streisand was initially offered the lead role, but she turned it down because she felt she was too young at the time. She also did not think people would accept her as a failed lounge singer. She later wrote a letter to director Martin Scorsese saying she was very sorry she could not take the role.
- #025
John Calley convinced Martin Scorsese that working successfully on the film would prove to Hollywood that he could make a commercial film from someone else's script, with established talent, a large budget, multiple locations and a woman in the lead role.
- #026
"Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" was the title of an episode of The Brady Bunch (1969) that aired on October 17, 1969. It was based on the 1933 song "Annie Doesn't Live Here Anymore," written by Joe Young, Johnny Burke and Harold Spina and popularized by Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians.
- #027
Ellen Burstyn initially considered Barbara Loden to direct the film, but settled on Martin Scorsese because she wanted the film to have a "rough" look.
- #028
During the shoot, Ellen Burstyn and Lelia Goldoni, who plays her best friend on screen, were best friends in real life.
- #029
While finishing work on the film, Martin Scorsese was also working on Italianamerican (1974), his documentary about his parents. Observers noted that the relationship between Scorsese and his mother in that film mirrors the exchanges between Alice and Tommy in this one.
- #030
Warner Bros. cast Ellen Burstyn after seeing the dailies of The Exorcist (1973). They sent her several scripts, but she felt that every woman in those scripts was either a victim, the hero's understanding wife or some kind of sex object, but never the main protagonist.
- #031
Ellen Burstyn was eager to work with Martin Scorsese because she loved the vivid intimacy of Mean Streets (1973) and thought that this sharpness could keep Alice from being too smooth and simple and from having too much of a "woman's picture" formula.
- #032
Before principal photography began, Martin Scorsese planned several weeks of rehearsal that would allow the actors to improvise many scenes. Robert Getchell attended these sessions, took notes and incorporated the improvised material into the script.
- #033
Martin Scorsese felt that Ben should be the "most accurately delineated" character in the film. He said that he and Harvey Keitel worked together to make Ben both funnier and crazier.
- #034
Martin Scorsese found the process of working on the film very exhausting and found the Ben scenes especially relaxing for him. During the production he told interviewer Tony Macklin: "This is my relationship with the people I've fallen in love with, my relationship with my friends. What Harvey represents about me in that film, what he represents for himself. In this film everyone plays this like a piece of a documentary about themselves, and so do I."
- #035
The fantastic opening scene that Martin Scorsese was especially proud of and excited about actually received the most negative reaction from critics.
- #036
According to Martin Scorsese, veteran cinematographer Russell Metty was present at the studio, shooting tests for the opening scene.
- #037
In the DVD audio commentary, Diane Ladd praises Valerie Curtin and her improvisations in many scenes, such as offering Tommy the mysterious book after Tommy drops his plate.
- #038
While scouting locations in downtown Tucson, Martin Scorsese noticed a Manhattan Bar sign and put the bar in the film as a tribute to his hometown of New York City.
- #039
In an interview in March 1975, Ellen Burstyn stated that the film "broke the record for the first week at the Sutton Theatre (in New York City) and that all the men who said it wouldn't work ate crow."
- #040
Although the film opens in Socorro, NM, no part of the film was actually shot in New Mexico. All location shooting was done in Arizona.
- #041
The cast includes four Oscar winners: Ellen Burstyn, Jodie Foster, Martin Scorsese and Laura Dern; and four Oscar nominees: Kris Kristofferson, Diane Ladd, Valerie Curtin and Harvey Keitel.
- #042
Kris Kristofferson plays a significant role in this film. In Martin Scorsese's next film, Taxi Driver (1976), there is a scene in which Robert De Niro's character gives Cybill Shepherd's character a Kris Kristofferson vinyl record as a gift.
- #043
Diane Ladd was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for this film but lost to Ingrid Bergman for Murder on the Orient Express (1974). Her daughter Laura Dern (who appears in this film) and Isabella Rossellini appeared together in Blue Velvet (1986) and Wild at Heart (1990) (in which Ladd also appeared).
- #044
In the first version of the screenplay, Robert Getchell, whom Martin Scorsese never met, had Tommy commit suicide.
- #045
According to her autobiography, Anne Bancroft was brought onto the project.
- #046
Film critic Pauline Kael suggested to screenwriter Robert Getchell that Robert Altman might be a good choice to direct the film.
- #047
This led to the creation of the popular TV series Alice (1976), which aired for 9 seasons. The series has a two-part episode: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore: Part 1 (1985) and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore: Part 2 (1985).
- #048
The anecdote in which David tells Alice about turkeys drowning in the rain is a frequently repeated myth. Turkeys are in fact quite social and intelligent. Although they have a genetic tendency to look upward for a few minutes, turkeys have monocular vision, meaning each eye can focus on a different object but both eyes cannot focus on the same thing at the same time. If a turkey tried to look up at falling rain, it would have to turn its head to the side to see (there is no depth of visual field), and its open mouth would not catch the raindrops.
- #049
Martin Scorsese himself called it a "nice picture."
- #050
At least four actors in this film would later appear in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976): Harvey Keitel, Jodie Foster, Murray Moston and Harry Northup.
- #051
Diana Ross was considered for the lead role.
- #052
Diane Ladd, who played Florence Jean "Flo" Castleberry in this film, and Polly Holliday, who played her in the television series Alice (1976) adapted from this film, died 55 days apart. Holliday died on September 9, 2025, and Ladd, who took Holliday's place in the television series as a different character, Isabelle "Belle" Dupree, died on November 3, 2025.
- #053
Laura Dern (Girl Eating Ice Cream Cone, uncredited) was 7 years old during filming * Jodie Foster (Audrey) was 11 * Alfred Lutter III (Tommy Hyatt) turned 12 during filming * Valerie Curtin (Vera) turned 33 * Harvey Keitel (Ben) was 34, although Ben claims to be 27 * Kris Kristofferson (David) was 37 * Billy Green Bush (Donald) was 38 * Diane Ladd (Flo) was 38 * Ellen Burstyn (Alice Hyatt, the main character) was 41.
- #054
Laura Dern (Girl Eating Ice Cream Cone) and Ellen Burstyn (Alice Hyatt) later worked together in The Tale (2018), as Jennifer and Nettie respectively.
- #055
Kris Kristofferson first appears in the film at the one-hour mark.
- #056
Martin Scorsese later directed Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver (1976).
- #057
Laura Dern appears in this film alongside Ellen Burstyn. She would later become known for two projects featuring a character named Ellen. She played Ellen ("Ellie") Sattler in the Jurassic Park series and appeared in the famous "coming out" episode of Ellen (1994). The character Ellen Morgan was played by Ellen DeGeneres.
- #058
The following people in the technical department won Oscar awards: * Martin Scorsese (director) won Best Director for The Departed (2006) out of 16 nominations (4 Best Picture, 2 Best Adapted Screenplay and 10 Best Director), * Marcia Lucas (editor) was nominated for Best Film Editing for Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) out of two nominations in the same category but did not win the award: * Robert Getchell (writer), nominated twice in the Best Original Screenplay category (one of them for this film), * Carroll Timothy O'Meara (assistant editor), nominated once for Best Film Editing.
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