Trivia / The Great Race

• Acting for Two: Jack Lemmon played both Professor Fate and Prince Hapnik. Their uncanny resemblance is a plot point.
• The Cast Showoff: The film has an example that is perhaps too brief as we only hear the character of Maggie - who is established as being fluent in Russian as Natalie Wood was in real life - speaking one mere sentence in Russian while addressing and winning over the sinister Russian villagers.
• Contractual Obligation Project: Natalie Wood didn't want to be in the film, but Warner Bros. executives talked her into it. At this point, Wood was unhappy with her career and her personal life, having recently divorced from Robert Wagner in April 1962. Warner asked Tony Curtis if he would give a percentage of his film royalties to Wood, as an enticement, but Curtis refused. He said, "I couldn't give her anything to make her want to do the movie." What eventually convinced Wood to make it was the promise by Warner executives that if she completed The Great Race, she could star in Inside Daisy Clover, a role she greatly wished to have. She agreed, thinking that filming would be brief on Edwards' movie (it wasn't, and she suffered psychologically when making both movies).
• Dueling Works: The far more commercially and critically successful Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, which is also a Slapstick Epic Movie about a long distance race in the immediate pre-World War I days and boasts some similar character archetypes, had been released not a month prior by Twentieth Century Fox, which hurt The Great Race in both departments (though it still made over double its budget at the box office). Those Magnificent Men... would spawn a sequel in 1969, Monte Carlo or Bust!, which starred The Great Race's Tony Curtis, oddly enough.
• Enforced Method Acting: When Professor Fate uses the railroad rocket-car for his second stunt, depending on who you ask either Blake Edwards decided not to tell the extras just how large of a pyrotechnic load was packed in the engine, or he didn't realize it himself. When the crowd scatters, what you see is genuine shock and terror on the faces of the extras.
• Hostility on the Set: Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood had previously costarred on two films (King's Go Forth and Sex and the Single Girl) and had a very acrimonious relationship. Wood also couldn't get along with Jack Lemmon; apparently part of the reason that Wood was unhappy on the film was that she felt she was being sexually harassed by the both of them.
• Non-Singing Voice: Robin Ward sang "The Sweetheart Tree" instead of Natalie Wood (her real singing resurfaced in 2009, it can be heard here). Wood sang "My Country 'tis of Thee" herself earlier on... you can tell because she sounds off-key.
• One for the Money; One for the Art: Natalie Wood accepted to be in the film so that Warner Bros. would accept to fund and release Inside Daisy Clover, which was a passion project for her.
• Production Posse: Blake Edwards, director and co-writer, apparently brought along a good number of the personnel he'd previously worked with on his television shows, most prominently Henry Mancini and Ross Martin.
• Those Two Actors:
  • Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood in their third (and final) film together, and Curtis and Jack Lemmon in their second of two. Although, ask anyone to name a Tony Curtis/Jack Lemmon film, they'll probably think of the other one.
  • One out of six films to have both Tony Curtis and Larry Storch in its cast (they were friends, also).
• What Could Have Been:
  • Charlton Heston was originally offered the role of The Great Leslie. He considered it a "funny script" but had to turn the part down when the production schedule for The Agony and the Ecstasy was delayed. Blake Edwards first wanted George Peppard, whom he had previously worked with, but Peppard was overseas filming "Operation Crossbow". Edwards then looked to Robert Wagner, but studio executive Jack L. Warner insisted on Tony Curtis, possibly because of Natalie Wood's recent divorce from Wagner. Burt Lancaster was announced at one stage.
  • Edwards wanted Jane Fonda for the role of Maggie DuBois, but she was busy filming Cat Ballou. He also considered Patty Duke, Elizabeth Hartman and Lee Remick.
  • Mickey Rooney, old friend and past collaborator of Blake Edwards, was approached for the role of Max, but he was currently busy shooting the short-lived TV vehicle Mickey and — much to his regret — had to pass on it. The role went to Peter Falk.

---