Lee Remick picked out two local Charleston kids to play her children. She chose the little girl because she looked like Lee at age 7. She chose the little boy because he loved hugging and kissing Lee.
At the time of the film, Montgomery Clift was an alcoholic. Elia Kazan extracted a promise from him that he would not drink during the shoot. With the help of his sympathetic co-stars, Lee Remick and Jo Van Fleet, he kept his word.
While she was filming this movie, Lee Remick's husband, Bill Colleran, was severely hurt in an auto accident, and she left the location shoot immediately. When she returned, she was given great support by co-star Montgomery Clift, who had been through a horrible car accident a few years earlier himself.
Elia Kazan was always fond of this movie and sometimes even said it was his favorite of all the films he made. In the 1970s he tried to buy the rights so that he could re-release it to the public, but the studio's asking price was too high for him.