Trivia / Roman Holiday

• Billing Displacement: Initially, the unknown Audrey Hepburn was planned to be billed much lower in the credits, despite playing one of the leads. Gregory Peck suggested halfway through filming that she be elevated to equal billing, as he could sense that she would likely win an Oscar for her performance.
• Cast the Expert:
  • The Embassy Ball featured actual Italian nobility, all of whom donated their salaries to charity.
  • Real reporters were also used at the end of the film.
• Completely Different Title:
  • Brazilian: A Princesa e o Plebeu ("The Princess and the Commoner")
  • American Spanish: La princesa que quería vivir ("The Princess Who Wanted to Live (Here)")
• Darkhorse Casting: Producers wanted either Jean Simmons or Elizabeth Taylor for the role of the princess. Prior to this film, Audrey Hepburn's career had consisted of small parts and playing Gigi on Broadway.
• Doing It for the Art: William Wyler wanted to shoot the movie in Rome so badly that he agreed to take a budget cut and shoot in black and white rather than the planned Technicolor to do so.
• Dueling Dubs: The movie was given NINE Japanese dubs as of 2022, making the film one of the foreign movies with more foreign dubbed versions in existence in Japan.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Gregory Peck lost sixteen pounds during the shooting because of the tremendous amount of work he gave and the fact he only ate one sandwich during the day.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • Audrey Hepburn wasn't told beforehand of Gregory Peck's stunt at the Mouth of Truth. Hepburn's reaction, therefore, is both genuine and spontaneous: exactly what Wyler was looking for.
  • When filming the scene where the princess says her goodbyes to Joe, the inexperienced Hepburn was unable to produce the necessary tears, eventually causing the director to complain about the number of wasted takes. Hepburn promptly burst into tears and the scene was filmed successfully.
• Executive Meddling: A scene had to be shot to clarify that Princess Ann was not British, solely to appease the British government (who was worried about the parallels between the film and the real-life drama involving Princess Margaret at the time).
• Hypothetical Casting: The writers originally envisioned Cary Grant and Shirley Temple in the lead roles, after RKO execs saw them in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer. Had this been made, it could have been a Career Resurrection for Temple.
• Playing Against Type: Invoked by Gregory Peck, who longed to do a comedy for the first time in his career.
• The Red Stapler:
  • The Italian Vespa two-stroke scooter enjoyed a surge in popularity after the film was released.
  • The haircut that Princess Ann gets became very popular in Japan of all places.
  • The cigarette-lighter camera (which really existed) became so in demand for a time that the Japanese manufacturer could not keep up.
• Romance on the Set: Both Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn met their respective spouses while working on this film.
• Star-Making Role: For Audrey Hepburn, who had only done bit parts and stage work beforehand.
• Stillborn Franchise: Both the leads were approached in The '70s about making a sequel that never happened. How to Steal a Million was conceived as a sequel.
• Throw It In!: Gregory Peck ad-libbed the aforementioned Enforced Method Acting.
• Typecasting: Catherine Oxenburg, who played Ann in The Remake, is actually a member of a European royal family, as her mother was Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, and actually played Princess Diana in two separate TV movies.
• Unbuilt Casting Type: Audrey Hepburn would later play a lot of characters who go through a Cinderella type story - usually Rags to Riches. Here in her first lead role, she does the reverse; a princess who tries to live as a commoner, and the return to her privileged life is played very sadly.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Joe was written for Cary Grant to play. He turned the part down, feeling he was too old to play Audrey Hepburn's love interest. They eventually played lovers in Charade ten years later.
  • Elizabeth Taylor was considered for Princess Ann in the early stages of development. William Wyler wanted Jean Simmons. Other candidates included Bibi Andersson, Capucine, Leslie Caron, Joan Collins, Yvonne De Carlo, Glynis Johns, Deborah Kerr, Angela Lansbury, Janet Leigh, Gina Lollobrigida, Dorothy Malone, Jeanne Moreau, Patricia Neal, Barbara Rush and Shelley Winters.

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