Shelley Winters hated her role as "Rose-Ann", primarily because, as a supporter of the Civil Rights Movement, she was very uncomfortable playing a racist. Winters actually was overwhelmed and speechless the night she won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.
Elizabeth Hartman wore a pair of opaque contact lenses that not only made her appear blind, but genuinely deprived her of her sight.
Scenes of Sidney Poitier and Elizabeth Hartman kissing were excised from the film when it was shown in theaters in the American South, where many states still had laws against what they called "race-mixing".
Patty Duke was offered the lead part of Selina D'Arcy. Her managers, John and Ethel Ross, did not want her to take the part because they felt that playing a blind person so close to the time she portrayed Helen Keller in Miracle en Alabama (1962) would stereotype her for future roles.
The film's primary musical motif was inspired by the act of stringing beads, an activity Selina frequently engages in over the course of the movie.