Trivia / The Legend of Lylah Clare

• Cast the Expert:
  • Many real life film journalists made cameos in the scene where Elsa gets introduced to the press.
  • Ellen Corby as the script supervisor. She worked as one in Real Life in the 30s and 40s before becoming an actress full-time.
• Creator Backlash: Robert Aldrich hated it. While at first he blamed Kim Novak, with whom he had Hostility on the Set during filming, he later blamed himself for not doing enough as a director to get audiences to care about the work.
• The Danza: Rossella Falk as Rossella (the second time in her career she did this, after 8½).
• Dawson Casting: At 35, Kim Novak was at least a decade older than Elsa is supposed to be.
• Fake Nationality: American Kim Novak as German Lylah Clare.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Didn't get a home video release until the 2011 DVD edition, leaving occasional TV airings as the only way to see it, which gave the film an added mystique along with its So Bad, It's Good reputation.
• Parody Retcon: Realizing the film wasn't very good, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer tried to market it as a campy comedy, but it became a Box Office Bomb anyway.
• Posthumous Credit: Co-writer Hugo Butler died of a heart attack before the film was finished.
• Star-Derailing Role: This was Novak's first film in three years, thanks to a combination of an injury and burnout with Hollywood. Playing a challenging role in an ambitious film seemed like a good chance to restart her career. Instead, the bad reviews and box office for a film where she was front-and-center damaged her reputation for good, and she mainly focused on TV after that, with the occasional low-budget film or supporting role in a larger film.
• Starring a Star as a Star: While her main role is aspiring actress Elsa Brinkmann/Campbell, Kim Novak also plays Lylah Clare in the flashback scenes, so the film still counts with a sex symbol from The '50s as a sex symbol from The Golden Age of Hollywood.
• Underage Casting: Peter Finch was 52, while the timeline suggests that Zarkan probably should be pushing 70.
• What Could Have Been: Jeanne Moreau and Ursula Andress were Robert Aldrich's original choices for Lylah.