Originally shown on US TV with only one commercial break.
While studying for her role, Cicely Tyson spent time with Mrs. Pearl Williams an actual centenarian. For one such visit, Stan Winston, Rick Baker, and the producers joined to talk with Mrs. Williams and take pictures for reference in order to create the 110-year-old look.
Dick Smith's prosthetic techniques, now standard in the makeup industry, had been controversial at the time. Rather than create one-piece masks to affect a complete facial transformation, Smith had begun to experiment with overlapping smaller, individual prosthetic pieces, and approach he had refined for Little Big Man (1970). "The movie makeup world had a tendency to be set in its ways" Smith remarked.. "so when I did Little Big Man with these separate prosthetics, my techniques were generally poo-poohed by a lot of makeup artists. They insisted that it was unnecessary and too labor-intensive to do it all in separate pieces. But, gradually, both the old timers and the newcomers began to see that this was an improvement. And now, of course, that's how everyone does it."