The Long, Hot Summer

After this film, director Martin Ritt became known forever as the man who tamed Orson Welles. During shooting, Ritt took Welles to a local swamp, threw him out of the car and forced him to find his own way back.

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Orson Welles was only 42 years old during filming, but was cast to play a 61-year-old man because of his weight. He had convincingly played similarly aged men in Moby Dick (1956) and Touch of Evil (1958).

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The success of this film helped Martin Ritt re-establish himself as a major director after being blacklisted in Hollywood for five years.

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Joanne Woodward became pregnant during the production, and she and Paul Newman suffered a miscarriage on their honeymoon, less than a month before the world premiere.

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This film marks the first cinematic collaboration between Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman.

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A month after production was completed, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward married in Las Vegas.

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Shooting the scene in which the barn burns took five days because the sky, the winds or the amount of sunlight were never acceptable to Martin Ritt.

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Orson Welles was required to drive a car in this film but could not drive, and he neglected to mention this before filming began.

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Filming began near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in the sweltering heat of September 1957, with a budget of approximately $1.5 million.

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During post-production, director Martin Ritt realized it was nearly impossible to understand any of Orson Welles's dialogue. He and his team worked overtime to do the best they could through post-dubbing. Some cast members thought Welles did this quite deliberately as a way of showing contempt for Actors Studio "mumbling" method actors, but no one could be sure.

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The cast includes three Oscar winners — Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward and Orson Welles — and three Oscar nominees — Dame Angela Lansbury, Anthony Franciosa and Lee Remick — amassing an impressive nineteen nominations among the six of them.

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To build a suitable characterization, Paul Newman went to Clinton, Louisiana, before filming began to study the mannerisms, accents and speech of Southern men.

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The 20th Century Fox logo from this film was used in The Greatest Showman (2017) ahead of that film's modern logos.

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Orson Welles had a difficult time during filming because he was under stress over the editing problems of Touch of Evil (1958).

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The conflicts between Orson Welles and director Martin Ritt drew media attention. In an interview with Life immediately after filming was completed, Welles explained that the reason for his behavior was that his co-stars did not know what "monkeyshines" he would pull or what "caprices" he would subject them to. He also stated that they had overcome their differences and completed the film. Welles later wrote Ritt a letter praising his work and apologizing for his interference during the making of the film. Ritt responded by expressing his admiration for Welles. Despite their mutual apologies, during a 1965 interview Ritt recalled an incident on set. Filming was often halted because of bad weather. On a day suitable for shooting, he found that Welles was not ready for his scene and was instead reading a Spanish-language newspaper. Ritt decided to skip Welles's scene and shoot the next one. He attributed Welles's later cooperation to this incident, which Welles found humiliating. Ritt thus earned the nickname "the Orson Tamer" in the Hollywood community.

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The chair in Will Varner's study has a spoked wheel. While he and Ben Quick play cards, a light shines in the background to emphasize this feature. It resembles a film reel.

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Martin Ritt strove to shoot in authentic Southern locations, but most of the cast's (with the exception of native Georgian Joanne Woodward) impressive Southern accents were far off the mark and completely different from those heard in Mississippi in particular. A similar situation arose years later with Ritt's Norma Rae (1979), set in North Carolina, where Sally Field was subjected to a highly inauthentic accent.

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Paul Newman was under contract to Warner Brothers and was loaned to 20th Century Fox for $75,000. His contract, meanwhile, earned him $17,500 for every ten weeks of shooting.

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Oscar Levant said of producer Jerry Wald: "Suddenly he got involved with William Faulkner. He bought a Faulkner property, and that turgid, incomprehensible prose was once turned into 'The Long, Hot Summer.' In that film Orson Welles played a Big Daddy-type role. Sometimes he couldn't be heard. Those were his best moments."

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Lee Remick later admitted that Orson Welles intimidated her on set during filming because of his iconic status.

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The screenplay was freely adapted from William Faulkner's novel "The Hamlet," an organic collection of a series of successful short stories published between 1931 and 1939 that forms the first novel of the Snopes trilogy.

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

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The name Ben Quick also appeared, as a sawmill owner, in the film Tomorrow (1960), which was based on another William Faulkner story.

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The bidding war for the picnic basket meal had previously been seen in both the stage and film versions of Oklahoma! (1955).

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Clara Varner drove a 1954 Lincoln Capri convertible with a Continental kit.

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Anthony Franciosa and Lee Remick also appeared together in A Face in the Crowd (1957).

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Martin Ritt decided to shoot on location to capture the characteristics of the region and emphasize regional details.

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At the beginning of the film, after Clara and Eula pick up Ben Quick and drive into town, they pass a road sign reading "Entering Frenchman's Bend," with Varner's businesses listed: General Store, Cotton Gin, Service Station, Hardware and Bank.

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Nine years after this production, Mabel Albertson and Joanne Woodward appeared in A Fine Madness (1966). In both films they shared brief scenes together.

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Composer Lionel Newman is not related to lead actor Paul Newman.

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