The Fabulous Baker Boys

Michelle Pfeiffer sang all of her own songs; no vocal double was used.

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The Fabulous Baker Boys was the first film in which the brothers Jeff Bridges and Beau Bridges acted together. Some of the disagreements between the Baker Boys were based on real differences between the Bridges brothers.

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The iconic "Makin' Whoopee" piano scene was choreographed, and filming it took six hours. Michelle Pfeiffer had only one choreography lesson and wore knee and elbow pads during rehearsals. The red velvet evening gown Pfeiffer wears in the scene was designed by the film's costume designer, Lisa Jensen.

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In a 2003 interview, Jeff Bridges said he wanted to make a sequel to the film that would tell what happened after the brothers' split.

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Michelle Pfeiffer had not sung for a year when she took the role of Susie Diamond. She had to practice ten hours a day at the studio and then took the tapes home to study.

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Although Dave Grusin recorded the songs for the soundtrack, Beau Bridges and Jeff Bridges learned to play all of the songs in the film. To make their playing look realistic, the actors watched video tapes of Grusin's hands playing the music.

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When George Roy Hill was assigned to direct, writer/director Steve Kloves raised the idea of giving the role of Suzie Diamond to the late Whitney Houston. Kloves had heard her sing as she was becoming a full-fledged superstar, and he and Hill attended a concert she gave at Carnegie Hall in New York. After the concert, Hill accepted the idea of Houston and wanted to change the film's unhappy ending so that Suzie and the Baker brothers go to Las Vegas and achieve great success. Kloves cut him off and told Hill that he would not change the film's ending regardless of whether Houston was cast.

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One of Jeff Bridges's favorite parts of making the film was choreographing the fight scene that he and his brother Beau have after their disastrous telethon.

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Before the fight between Frank and Jack after the benefit, writer-director Steve Kloves asked Beau Bridges whether it was true that he had turned down the Ryan O'Neal role in Love Story (1970). Beau said it was true and that he was still angry about it after all these years. Using that as motivation for the scene, Beau actually confronted his brother Jeff. Jeff accidentally broke his finger on the set.

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As part of the film's production deal, Sydney Pollack retained final cut. He later gave it to Steve Kloves.

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The brothers Dennis Quaid and Randy Quaid turned down the roles of the brothers Jack Baker and Frank Baker. Steve Kloves would later direct Dennis Quaid in Flesh and Bone (1993).

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There is a scene in which Jeff Bridges and Michelle Pfeiffer have a small bit of foreplay using different objects such as shaving cream and butter on bread. The scene was not working, so writer-director Steve Kloves told the crew to take an hour's break so that he could discuss with Bridges, Pfeiffer and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus how to handle the scene. Kloves simplified it, and it became one of his favorite scenes in the film.

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The film was included on the American Film Institute's 2002 list of 400 films nominated for the 100 Greatest Love Stories of America.

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When the film first began development in 1986, 20th Century Fox wanted Bill Murray and Chevy Chase in the lead roles.

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Madonna was initially offered the role of Susie Diamond, which ultimately went to Michelle Pfeiffer. Madonna turned down the offer because she thought the plan was "too mushy."

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Much of the film was shot at night; this was why writer-director Steve Kloves hired production designer Jeffrey Townsend, as he loved Townsend's work on Martin Scorsese's black comedy After Hours (1985), which was shot almost entirely at night, and he also hired cinematographer Michael Ballhaus to contribute to Townsend's magnificent production design.

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While the film was in development at Warner Bros., George Roy Hill was assigned to direct it and in fact worked on it with writer and eventual director Steve Kloves in New York for six weeks. However, a disagreement over the film's ending caused Hill to withdraw from the project, and Kloves was ultimately chosen because no one else wanted to direct the film.

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Jazz musician and recording artist John F. Hammond, along with Oscar winner Dave Grusin, provided the other half of Jeff Bridges's and Beau Bridges's piano performances. However, Jeff was a real musician and knew how to play, while Beau was more of an amateur. At that point Grusin was much more flamboyant, and in the film's final mix you mostly hear his and Hammond's piano solos.

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The song "Makin' Whoopee" was included on the American Film Institute's 2004 list of the 100 Greatest American Movie Music, which was drawn from a list of 400 films.

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The actresses who were offered or accepted the role of Susie Diamond included Madonna, Debra Winger, Brooke Shields, Jodie Foster and Jennifer Jason Leigh. The role ultimately went to Michelle Pfeiffer.

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The film marked Oscar winner Dave Grusin's second consecutive Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score. He had finally won in 1988 for Robert Redford's The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), and his third consecutive nomination came for Havana (1990), the first lead role for his friend and director Sydney Pollack since Pollack directed Out of Africa (1985). In 1993 he would receive one more Oscar nomination, again on Pollack's behalf, for the adaptation of John Grisham's novel "The Firm."

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After appearing in three films released in 1988, this was Michelle Pfeiffer's only theatrical film released in 1989: Tequila Sunrise (1988), Married to the Mob (1988) and Dangerous Liaisons (1988).

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The film went through a troubled development period that began when Mark Canton took over Warner Bros. He loved the project, but the person who replaced him after he left the studio to run Columbia Pictures did not like the film and stayed attached to it because many A-list actors, including Bill Murray, Chevy Chase and others, liked Steve Kloves's script and wanted to make the film. Eventually Sydney Pollack and his producing partner Mark Rosenberg, who were involved in the project and had supported it from the start, pressured Warners to return the film and take it to another studio to make it. The film then went to Gladden Entertainment, which did not want to make it either, and studio head David Begelman greenlit the film because he had made a $3 million profit on foreign rights. Problems continued, however, because the studio had a distribution deal with Twentieth Century-Fox that was part of the studio's old regime: Begelman and Fox president Barry Diller had personal issues with each other, which delayed the project in some way and led to the film's small release in September 1989. Nevertheless, since the film received critical praise and performed exceptionally well at the box office despite its limited theatrical run, Diller later expanded it to a wider release. It became a surprise box office success, earned 4 Oscar nominations and was a major awards contender in the 1990 awards season.

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Michelle Pfeiffer had previously sung in Grease 2 (1982).

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Jack's apartment was in fact a set created by production designer Jeffrey Townsend.

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It was Steve Kloves's last theatrical film as a director for four years, until Flesh and Bone (1993), which remains (as of March 2017) the last theatrical film directed by Kloves, who works mainly as a screenwriter and is now a producer.

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The nightclub where Susie Diamond and the Fabulous Baker Boys performed was called the "Starfire Lounge."

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Actress Ellie Raab has a similar role alongside John Travolta in Eyes of an Angel (1991). Like the Jeff Bridges character in The Fabulous Baker Boys, she plays his daughter, and John Travolta's character enters the apartment through the outside window.

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The film's cast includes one Oscar winner, Jeff Bridges, and two Oscar nominees, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jennifer Tilly.

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Susie raising the kid's salary while still having only slightly above-average singing ability reinforces the story's fate that the characters will have only middling careers.

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