Trivia / Irma la Douce

• Awesome, Dear Boy: Shirley MacLaine signed on without having read the script because she "believed in Billy Wilder and Jack Lemmon."
• Creator Backlash: Despite the above, Shirley MacLaine was not happy with the script once she read it, and thought even less of the film after it was released, calling it "crude and clumsy". She was surprised to get a nomination for the Oscar for Best Actress out of it, saying, "I would have been nonplussed had I won it."
• Fake Nationality: Almost all of the main cast are Americans playing Frenchpeople, with Moustache's actor (Lou Jacobi) being Canadian.
• The Other Marty: Paul Frees voiced the film's narrator in the film's trailer, but in the film proper the narrator is voiced by Louis Jourdan.
• Troubled Production: The scenes taking place at the Seine were shot on location at the real river. Problem was, the Seine was heavily polluted at the time of shooting. For the scene where Lord X emerges from underwater, Jack Lemmon had to be given several immunization shots, including tetanus, before entering the water. He later said it was the most disgusting thing he had ever had to do in a film.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The film was originally conceived as a Marilyn Monroe vehicle in 1962, which would have reunited her with Billy Wilder and Jack Lemmon after both worked with her on Some Like It Hot, but after Monroe's death, Shirley MacLaine was cast in the film, after having also worked with Wilder and Lemmon in The Apartment. Wilder also stated that his very first choice for the role of Irma was Elizabeth Taylor, but he didn't want to deal with Taylor and Richard Burton's affair going on at the time.
  • Charles Laughton, who was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor for his performance under Wilder's direction in Witness for the Prosecution, was Wilder's first choice to play Moustache, and Laughton even agreed to play the role, but died before principal photography commenced.