The film holds the record for the most Academy Award nominations without a nomination for Best Picture: 9.
According to an interview with star Michael Sarrazin, this film was shown to the public in Russia as a piece of anti-American propaganda on the evils of capitalism.
Sydney Pollack shot some of the frightening derby sequences himself, donning a pair of roller skates to get right in the action with the frantically heel/toe-ing actors.
It took nearly 35 years for Horace McCoy's Depression-era novel to be made into a film. At various points in that time, Charles Chaplin, Joseph Losey, and François Truffaut all were interested in doing a screen adaptation.