The Star

In the scene where a drunken Margaret Elliot takes her Oscar for a ride in her car, Bette Davis used one of her own Oscars.

At least two different Oscar statuettes were used in the "c'mon, Oscar, let's you and me get drunk" sequence. For the first 18 years, Oscar statuettes had a short base. Starting with the 1946 awards (presented in 1947), Oscar statuettes had a taller pedestal base with a brass collar designed for personalized engraving. The statuette that Maggie holds in her apartment and in front of her old house has the pre-1946 base. The one she sets on the dashboard of her car has the newer pedestal base. The switch was made because the Oscar had to rest its head on the backside of the car's rear-view mirror in order to balance on the dashboard while Maggie drove around. Davis' two pre-1946 Oscars were too short, so a newer Oscar was used during shots of the car's interior.

During the scene depicting the shooting of the screen test, Margaret speaks about working with cinematographer "Ernie Laszlo," a reference to this film's actual cinematographer, Ernest Laszlo.

One scene required young Natalie Wood, who had a lifelong morbid fear of water due to a near-fatal on-set accident when she was nine, to dive off the pier near the Sterling Hayden character's seaside home. When director Stuart Heisler demanded take after take, Wood became progressively more hysterical, until Davis intervened on Natalie's behalf and requested a break in filming, thus allowing Wood to regain her composure. Eventually, a stunt double was used to do the dive.

Margaret Elliot (Bette Davis) drives a 1948 Mercury Sedan, which she upgrades to a 1952 Cadillac Convertible when her fortunes seem to be improving. Jim Johannsen (Sterling Hayden) drives a 1951 Mercury Station Wagon, and Henry Stone (Warner Anderson) drives a 1952 Lincoln Capri Convertible.