Alberto Sordi refused to communicate with Bette Davis in English on the set and made her very angry. Of her co-star she said, "My name for Albert Sordi was Albert Sordid. It was unforgivable of him to refuse to speak English with me, especially as he spoke very good English."
Bette Davis was in the midst of a three-week vacation at the health spa La Costa in Carlsbad, California when she received the script. On twenty-four-hour notice she flew to Rome for filming. It wasn't until the first day of shooting she learned the dialogue was to be recorded in Italian.
The card game in the film is called Scopa. Scopa is an Italian noun meaning "broom" since taking a scopa means "to sweep" all the cards from the table. Scopa is an Italian card game and one of the two major national card games in Italy. It is also popular in Brazil, brought in by Italian immigrants, mostly in the Scopa di Quindici variation. Scopa is also played in countries like Libya and Somalia. It is played with a standard Italian 40-card deck, mostly between two players or four in two partnerships, but it can also be played by 3, 5, or 6 players.
In 2008, the film was selected to enter the list of the 100 Italian films to be saved (100 film italiani da salvare). The list was created with the aim to report "100 films that have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978". The project was established by the Venice Days ("Giornate degli Autori") in the Venice Film Festival, in collaboration with Cinecittà Holding and with the support of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage.
Italian censorship visa # 60884 delivered on 24 August 1972.