Trivia / A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

• Billing Displacement: Phil Silvers is billed second, even though there are several actors with larger roles than him.
• Cast the Runner-Up: During filming, Phil Silvers locked himself in his trailer and refused to come out. Richard Lester asked Jon Pertwee to step into the role of Lycus, as he already played the part on stage. Once Silvers heard he had been replaced, he came out of his trailer, bursting with new enthusiasm for the project. Pertwee was given the tiny role of Crassus as compensation.
• Creator Backlash: Sondheim, Shevelove, and Gelbart disliked the changes made to the film. Richard Lester and Zero Mostel also expressed dissatisfaction.
• Cut Song: "Love is in the Air", "Invocation", and "The House of Marcus Lycus", amongst others — some are included as underscoring, or added to revivals. Several of the lyrics from "Invocation" are recycled into "Comedy Tonight," while Sondheim and Burt Shevelove reused the music and lyrics of "Invocation" as the opening of their musical version of Aristophanes' The Frogs.
• Hostility on the Set: Several examples.
  • Zero Mostel, who had been blacklisted for being a communist sympathizer in the 1950s, was totally unwilling to act in the show once he found out that it was to be choreographed by Jerome Robbins, who had named names to the HUAC, and only agreed to under the proviso that he and Robbins never had to speak to each other when they weren't working.
  • Director Richard Lester got into repeated arguments with Phil Silvers, who was cast in the role of Lycus and complained about many aspects of the film, particularly being forced to abandon his trademark glasses in the name of historical realism. This culminated in Silvers locking himself in his trailer and refusing to perform. Lester was able to contact Jon Pertwee (who played Lycus in the original London production) and soon had him on the set, in costume, ready to step in. When Silvers learned he had been replaced so quickly, he emerged from his trailer in a much more agreeable mood. Pertwee was recast in the smaller role of Crassus as compensation.
  • Lester and the film's writer/producer Melvin Frank did not see eye to eye, as Lester disliked the wisecracking verbal comedy of the script and the original musical, and pushed to include more visual humor in the style of classic silent movies.
• No Stunt Double: Michael Crawford did his own stunts.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: In one scene, the actor playing Pseudolus would turn to the audience and ask them for what line he should say.
• Real-Life Relative: Jon Pertwee's brother Michael co-wrote the film.
• Stillborn Franchise: Even before it was released, producer Mel Frank announced a sequel A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Guillotine. It never went any further than development stage.
• Throw It In!: Buster Keaton had to use a stunt double for most of his scenes because he was terminally ill with cancer. He did, however, improvise pratfalling after running into a tree branch, much to the horror of the crew.
• Troubled Production: The out-of-town tryout of the musical got such disastrous audience response and poor ticket sales that it seemed it would never reach Broadway. West Side Story director Jerome Robbins was brought in as a consultant, and persuaded Stephen Sondheim to write a new, simple song that would tell the audience right away to expect a farcical comedy; Sondheim wrote "Comedy Tonight," and the new opening number, choreographed by Robbins, turned the show into a hit.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Charlie Chaplin, Mike Nichols, Orson Welles, and Jean Renoir were considered to direct the film.
  • The original Broadway production offered the role of Pseudolus to Milton Berle and Phil Silvers (who eventually played the part in a 1971 revival and won a Tony Award for it).

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