Trivia / The Miracle Worker

• California Doubling: The 1962 film was shot in Middletown, New Jersey and at the Big Sky Movie Ranch in Simi Valley, CA, doubling for Alabama. The 1979 film was also shot in California, and the 2000 film was shot in Canada.
• Dawson Casting:
  • Patty Duke was 15 when the 1962 film was made, playing 7-year-old Helen. The studio actually took quite a bit of convincing that she could still believably play that young. Melissa Gilbert was the same age when the 1979 film was shot.
  • Anne Bancroft was 30 when she played Annie Sullivan, when the real Annie was 20 when she first met Helen.
• Enforced Method Acting: During rehearsals, Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke inadvertently bruised each others' ribs during the famous spoon scene, since neither was experienced in stage combat. It got to the point that the actors wore heavy padding under their costumes to avoid more serious injuries, and the filmed version was shot over several days to avoid wearing them out.
• Executive Meddling: United Artists offered writer William Gibson and director Arthur Penn a $2 million budget if they cast a more well-known starlet as Annie Sullivan. They insisted on reprising Anne Bancroft, and UA responded by cutting their budget in half.
• Star-Making Role: For Patty Duke. She got an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (becoming the youngest-ever Oscar winner at the time), and her own sitcom, The Patty Duke Show.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn were United Artists' preferred choices to play Annie. Ingrid Bergman claimed in her autobiography that she'd been offered the part.
  • François Truffaut reportedly tried to buy the film rights. When he couldn't, he made L'Enfant Sauvage, a film about a different feral child.

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