"The Screen Guild Theater" broadcast a 30 minute radio adaptation of the movie on October 20, 1947 with Bette Davis reprising her film role.
Nanette Fabray's first film.
Charles Laughton, whom Bette Davis greatly admired, visited her on the set. Seeing him she greeted him with, "Hi, Pop!" referencing his Oscar-winning portrayal of Henry VIII. While talking together in a corner of the set, the thirty-one year old actress confessed to him that she felt she had bitten off more than she could chew in playing an older Elizabeth. According to the Davis biography 'Fasten Your Seat Belts',he replied, "Never stop daring to hang yourself, Bette!"
Errol Flynn and Bette Davis disliked each other, and when Elizabeth slaps Essex in front of the entire court, Davis hauled off and unexpectedly belted Flynn for real. The anger on Essex's face is quite genuine, as is Flynn's visible imposition of self-control to avoid hitting Davis back.
Bette Davis (31 at the time the movie was made) was less than half the actual age of Queen Elizabeth was at the time of the events of the film. Queen Elizabeth was 63 in 1596.
Bette Davis had originally wanted Laurence Olivier for the role of Lord Essex, claiming that Errol Flynn could not speak blank verse well. She remained extremely upset about this through the entire filming, and Flynn and Davis never worked again together in a film, but according to Olivia de Havilland, she and Davis screened the film again a short while before Davis's stroke. At film's end, Davis turned to de Havilland and declared that she had been wrong about Flynn, and that he gave a fine performance as Essex.
As well as shaving two inches off her hairline at the forehead, Bette Davis also had her eyebrows removed. She later complained that they never grew back properly and that ever after she had to draw them in with an eyebrow pencil.
For several years, from the time of Errol Flynn's death until the film was issued on videocassette and began to be shown on Turner Classic Movies, the title was changed to "Elizabeth the Queen", the title of Maxwell Anderson's original play on which the film is based.
The real Robert Cecil was apparently a dwarf, and one of Queen Elizabeth's chief counselors, not the supercilious character portrayed in this film, or in Maxwell Anderson's original play. The queen would affectionately refer to him as "my dwarf". He is more accurately portrayed in the TV miniseries Elizabeth I.
The relationship between Elisabeth and Essex bordered on the incestuous. His maternal great-grandmother Mary Boleyn was a sister of Anne Boleyn, mother of Queen Elizabeth I, making him a cousin of the Queen, and there were rumors that his grandmother, Catherine Carey, a close friend of Queen Elizabeth's, was Henry VIII's illegitimate daughter. Moreover, his mother was married to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the Queen's most beloved courtier and (it is rumored) her secret lover.
The sixth of nine movies made together by Warner Brothers' romantic couple Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn.
This was an adaptation of the play "Elizabeth the Queen" by Maxwell Anderson. The title of the movie was to be the same, but Errol Flynn protested that he wanted his presence acknowledged in the title. The choice of "The Knight and the Lady" upset Bette Davis, and "Elizabeth and Essex" was a book title already copyrighted. Thus the final unwieldy title was used. The stage production opened at the Guild Theatre in New York on November 3, 1930 starring legendary married couple Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt. The play ran for 147 performances.
To give the illusion of baldness, Bette Davis shaved her head two inches in front to show a high forehead under Elizabeth's red wigs.