FILM · 1989 · USA
Driving Miss Daisy
32 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (32)
- #001
Jessica Tandy was so convinced she would lose that she made a $100 bet with her agent that she would not win the Oscar for Best Actress. When she paid up on Oscar night, she said it was the best bet she had ever lost.
- #002
In Atlanta, three Black men are seen crossing the railroad tracks. All three of these men are descendants of the real person on whom the character "Hoke" was based (Will Coleman).
- #003
Jessica Tandy won the Best Actress Oscar for the role of Daisy Werthan. At 81, she is the oldest person to win the Best Actress Oscar. She was the oldest winner of a competitive Oscar until 2012, when Christopher Plummer won Best Supporting Actor at 82 for Beginners (2010). She is still the oldest acting winner and nominee (at 88 she was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for All the Money in the World (2017)). She was later surpassed by James Ivory, who at 89 won Best Adapted Screenplay for Call Me by Your Name (2017).
- #004
Alfred Uhry based the story of Daisy and Hoke on his own grandmother, Lena G. Fox (August 5, 1877 – February 22, 1973), and her chauffeur, Will Coleman (dates unknown). She lived to be 96.
- #005
Morgan Freeman created the role of Hoke in the play's off-Broadway production.
- #006
The film is the only adaptation of an off-Broadway production ever to win the Oscar for Best Picture.
- #007
Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Lucille Ball, Lauren Bacall and Angela Lansbury all wanted to play Miss Daisy. Studio executives also considered a Bette Midler and Eddie Murphy pairing. (Angela Lansbury later took on the role of Miss Daisy on the play's Australian tour, with James Earl Jones as Hoke Coburn.)
- #008
Miss Daisy's 6,140-square-foot Georgian house at 822 Lullwater Rd NE, Atlanta, GA., 30307 went on sale in 2013 for $1.99 million. With an expanded third floor, the house now has six bedrooms and five and a half bathrooms.
- #009
In the scene where Miss Daisy and Hoke stop to eat on the way to Mobile, Alabama, Miss Daisy recounts her first trip to Alabama in 1888, when she was 12 years old. The film ends in 1973, when she is 97.
- #010
The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1988.
- #011
The project was rejected by Walt Disney Studios, 20th Century Fox, Universal, Paramount and Columbia.
- #012
It is one of six films to win the Best Picture Oscar without being nominated for Best Director. The others are Wings (1927), Grand Hotel (1932), Argo (2012), Green Book (2018) and CODA (2021).
- #013
The role of Florine, played by Patti LuPone, does not appear in the original play. It was written specifically by Alfred Uhry for LuPone, who Uhry thought looked good in costume.
- #014
It contains Dan Aykroyd's only Oscar-nominated performance.
- #015
In the scene where Miss Daisy gives Hoke a writing book, she tells him she taught the same book to Mayor Hartsfield. This is a reference to William Hartsfield (1890–1971), who served six terms as mayor of Atlanta between 1937 and 1961.
- #016
The film Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! (1948) is showing in the tent next to the Piggly Wiggly on Hoke's first drive with Miss Daisy to the market. It was first released in 1948, which helps establish a timeline for the film.
- #017
It is the second of two Oscar Best Picture winners adapted from Pulitzer Prize-winning plays. The first was You Can't Take It with You (1938).
- #018
The temple bombing took place in 1958.
- #019
As revealed at the roadside picnic, Daisy Werther was born in 1876. The period photograph of schoolchildren and their teachers that Hoke looks at on his first day shows Daisy as a schoolteacher in 1896. The story begins in 1948, when Daisy is 72.
- #020
Near the end of the film, viewers see Boolie Werthan put his mother's house up for sale. The house is listed by Harry Norman Realtors, a real estate company in Atlanta, Georgia. It was founded in the 1930s and was still operating as of 2009, run by a descendant of the company's founder, Mrs. Harry Norman.
- #021
Martin Luther King's meeting in Atlanta took place in January 1960.
- #022
The original 1987 Off-Broadway play had only three actors: Dana Ivey, Morgan Freeman and Ray Gill.
- #023
Cars are an inseparable part of Driving Miss Daisy and deserve a note: the film opens with Miss Daisy (Jessica Tandy) accidentally wrecking a black 1947 Chrysler Royal Sedan. After the crash, the family engages the services of Hoke Colburn (Morgan Freeman) and buys a maroon 1949 Hudson Commodore Sedan. Her son Boolie (Dan Aykroyd) drives a bottle-green 1949 Cadillac Series 61 Sedanette. The Hudson is traded in for a black 1955 Cadillac Fleetwood 60 Special Sedan. Boolie later drives a black 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham. (Alabama police patrol in a 1957 Ford Custom 300 Police Sedan.) The 1955 Cadillac is replaced by a blue 1965 Cadillac Calais Sedan. Boolie later gets a white 1970 Cadillac Fleetwood 60 Special Sedan. It gives way to a navy blue 1971 Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 4.5 sedan. Finally, Morgan Freeman is driven by his granddaughter in a 1970 Mercury Cougar.
- #024
Meanwhile, the Piggly Wiggly in Memphis was the first grocery store to offer self-service shopping rather than filling orders from customer lists, an innovation Miss Daisy would have wholeheartedly embraced.
- #025
As an indirect salute to Eleanor Roosevelt's leadership in the path from coexistence to acceptance, Hoke sits in the front seat with Boolie on his first visit to the Werthan house; surprisingly, this was an extremely selfless gesture even in the year Truman ended racial segregation in the US military.
- #026
Before Idella dies, she and Hoke watch The Edge of Night (1956). At the time the film was made, CBS broadcast "Edge" live at 4 p.m. every day. Since this episode refers to the murder of Victor Carlson, it would be placed in April or May 1961. This is depicted as taking place before Martin Luther King's 1960 Atlanta speech.
- #027
It is the first film to win Best Picture at both the Oscars and the Producers Guild of America Awards.
- #028
It is the only film that year nominated for both the Best Actor and Best Actress Oscars.
- #029
It was included on the American Film Institute's 1998 list of 400 films nominated for the 100 Best American Films.
- #030
When Daisy first allows Hoke to drive her, she says that nobody is a fool. Nobody's Fool (1994) was Jessica Tandy's last film, as she passed away before its release.
- #031
In the scenes featuring the black four-door Cadillac sedan, Bruce Beresford used both a 1955 and a 1956 Cadillac. Apart from the rear exhaust fender extension on the '56, the cars look identical on the outside; the '55's rear fender is flat.
- #032
It features a clarinet-based piece of background music that was also used in Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), another Southern-set Jessica Tandy film.
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