After the movie was finished, Sir Laurence Olivier went to New York City for a short time, and had dinner in a restaurant with friends. During the dinner, he recalled to his friends something he said about the movie while Sidney J. Furie was still directing: "This piss is shit." Olivier later said a reporter must have been at the table next to his, because the next day the New York Daily News reported what he said (though with both vulgar words changed to cleaner derogatory words). This news soon spread completely across the country, and with threats of lawsuits in the air, Olivier quickly made a statement to the press claiming that in the end, the movie had been made well, and that he totally supported it. Olivier also wrote a handwritten ten-page letter to director Richard Fleischer, not only apologizing for the restaurant incident, but also indirectly giving an explanation as to why he was making so many movies strictly for the money.
The movie produced three chart-topper hit songs for Neil Diamond, "America", "Hello Again" and "Love on the Rocks".
The scene where Jess Robin (Neil Diamond) performs "You Baby Baby" in the Cinderella Club with an afro and black makeup on was actually done as a minor tribute to Al Jolson, who did The Jazz Singer (1927) in blackface.
Richard Fleischer replaced Sidney J. Furie as director. During the several weeks Furie directed the movie, he was constantly re-writing the screenplay, and Catlin Adams, during that time, had no idea if her character was married to Jess Robin (Neil Diamond) or not. Other scenes were ad-libbed on the spot without any idea where they would be placed. Furie refused to speak to any representatives from the production company (EMI) expressing concern about what was happening. Eventually, EMI threatened to close down the production if Furie did not sent them a completed screenplay within a week. Upon receiving the screenplay, EMI not only judged it to be bad (among other things, it eliminated the key "Kol Nidre" sequence), but that it would double the budget, as well as the time originally scheduled for shooting. Subsequently, Furie was fired, having already shot forty-eight hours of often unusable footage, and Richard Fleischer was contacted to salvage the project.
Neil Diamond composed and sang ten new songs for this movie, which were then recorded live on film for the movie.