A critical and financial disaster at the box-office for Twentieth Century Fox. According to studio records, ten million six hundred seventy-five thousand dollars in rentals was required to just break even, but only about one-fifth of that amount was realized.
In his diaries, Richard Burton noted Rex Harrison's attempts to upstage him: "Rex is very funny in his old-fashioned attempts to upstage, get into my close-ups, do funny business on my lines etc. It's rather like acting with a very determined young actress."
In O Vilão (1971), Richard Burton again played a gay Londoner who loved his mother (again played by Cathleen Nesbitt).
This movie was widely denounced as homophobic.