Trivia / Kiss Me, Stupid

• Billing Displacement: Dean Martin and Kim Novak get top billing but Ray Walston and Felicia Farr have the actual lead roles.
• Non-Singing Voice: Despite having played leading roles in both Hollywood and Broadway musicals, when he's pitching his songs to Dino, Ray Walston's vocals are obviously provided by someone else.
• The Other Marty: Filming began with Peter Sellers as Orville Spooner, but his infamous multiple heart attacks happened midway through production and his doctors ordered him to quit. Rather than scrap the film, Billy Wilder hired Ray Walston to replace Sellers and refilmed all the scenes.
• Prop Recycling: The bentwood bed in Orville and Zelda's bedroom is the same bed that was in C.C. Baxter's apartment in a previous Billy Wilder film, The Apartment.
• Troubled Production: This project was snakebit from the beginning. First, Peter Sellers proved difficult when he began having Creative Differences with Billy Wilder. Then, Sellers had a near-fatal heart attack halfway through production forcing Wilder to scramble to find a replacement. As seen in What Could Have Been section below, Wilder unsuccessfully tried to recruit a number of actors for the role before casting Ray Walston. Next, the film got into trouble with the Catholic Legion of Decency who tagged it with a "Condemned" rating. This inadvertently generated free publicity for the movie but also made a number of theater owners gun-shy about showing it. Finally, when the movie was released, it was met with lukewarm critical reaction and disappointing box office returns thereby ending what had been a long streak of critical and financial successes for Wilder.
• What Could Have Been:
  • It was conceived as a partial Some Like It Hot reunion, with Jack Lemmon as Orville and Marilyn Monroe as Polly, but Monroe died^note Ironically, Dean Martin also co-starred in another film affected by Monroe's death, the aborted Something's Got to Give, and Kim Novak turned down an offer to replace Monroe there as well and Lemmon couldn't resolve his scheduling conflicts (but his wife Felicia Farr is in the film as Zelda).
  • After Peter Sellers left the film, Bob Hope and Danny Kaye were all considered to take over as Orville before Ray Walston was hired.
  • With Monroe unavailable for Polly, Jayne Mansfield was courted for the role, but since she was pregnant with a baby girl, she ultimately turned it down and Kim Novak took it instead.
• Working Title: The film was known as The Sizzling Hour during production.

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