This became the first movie in Academy Awards and cinema history to be nominated for every Academy Award category in which it was eligible, including Best Adapted Screenplay (Ernest Lehman), Director (Mike Nichols), all of the acting categories (Richard Burton, Dame Elizabeth Taylor, George Segal and Sandy Dennis) and Picture of the Year (Ernest Lehman), since Cimarron (1931).
Every credited member of the cast received an Academy Award nomination.
Director Mike Nichols later realized that his insistence on location shooting at an actual college campus had been unnecessary. All of the scenes could have easily been re-created on the studio backlot. It was one of many lessons he was to learn as a first time movie director. "I was a New York theater director", he said. "I was cocky and I was afraid of Hollywood. I did really stupid things, like shooting the title sequence in Northampton. They tried to tell me I could have done it right on the backlot. But I didn't know anything about movies."
Dame Elizabeth Taylor gained nearly thirty pounds to play the role of a middle-aged wife just for this movie.
Dame Elizabeth Taylor was only thirty-three when this movie was filmed in 1965, while her character Martha is supposed to be fifty-two.