Trivia / A Face in the Crowd

• Career Resurrection: This was Patricia Neal's return to the screen after a four-year absence from Hollywood, an absence that was precipitated by a much-publicized affair with Gary Cooper (who was married at the time), and a subsequent nervous breakdown.
• Creator Backlash: Sort of. Andy Griffith was proud of his work on the movie, but found the experience of playing such a hateful character as Lonesome extremely distasteful and was reluctant to ever play a true villain again (which he wouldn't until the mid-'90s with his performances in the television movie Gramps and in Spy Hard as General Rancor, and even then, the latter was a comedy).
• Dawson Casting: Lee Remick, 22 at the time, as 17-year-old Betty Lou.
• Deleted Role: According to a 1983 interview with Charles Nelson Reilly, he made his film debut in this picture playing a saxophonist, but it was cut before the film's release.
• Enforced Method Acting: Elia Kazan claimed in an interview that he had to get Andy Griffith genuinely drunk to film Lonesome Rhodes' final meltdown, as Griffith was simply too genial and amiable to tap into the darkest side of the character while sober.
• Playing Against Type: Though it was his first film, Andy Griffith was already known for playing good-natured hicks in his comedy routines and on Broadway, making his role as an alcoholic, womanizing Jerkass all the more disturbing.
• Referenced by...: The film's climax is parodied in UHF via R.J. Fletcher's Engineered Public Confession; in the DVD Commentary for UHF, "Weird Al" Yankovic jokes about how blatant the reference is.
• Star-Making Role: For Andy Griffith, who followed this up with his own TV show.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Marlon Brando was offered the lead role, but turned it down.
  • Andy Kaufman, a fan of the film, intended to remake it with himself starring as Lonesome Rhodes, playing off of his longtime fascination with the boundaries between the fictitious personae of media personalities and the real-life nature of the audiences they perform for. However, the idea never got off the ground before Kaufman's death in 1984.
• Working Title: The Arkansas Traveler.

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