This became the first movie in Academy Awards history since I pionieri del West (1931) 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).
Dame Elizabeth Taylor gained nearly thirty pounds to play the role of a middle-aged wife just for this movie.
Every credited member of the cast received an Academy Award nomination.
While Richard Burton and Dame Elizabeth Taylor were forces to be reckoned with while they were working, it was a challenge to actually get them in front of the camera every day. They both had it in their contracts that they didn't have to be on the set until 10:00 a.m., even though most other productions began at dawn. After they arrived on set, it would take two hours of make-up, hair and wardrobe to get them ready for shooting and by the time they were camera ready, it was lunch time. They would often go off for lengthy cocktail-filled lunches, often with friends, and then return late in the afternoon to finally begin shooting. "When they finally came back late", recalled editor Sam O'Steen, "they'd just ignore it all, be real nice. 'Hey, Mike, old buddy, sorry we're late. Okay, let's shoot!' Sometimes they wouldn't come back until five o'clock and they had in their contract that they couldn't work past six o'clock."
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."