Jack Albertson won the 1965 Tony Award (New York City) for Supporting or Features Actor in a Drama for "The Subject was Roses" and recreated the role in this production.
Martin Sheen and Jack Albertson reprised their roles (Timothy Cleary and John Cleary) in this film after previously playing the characters in the stage version on Broadway.
Martin Sheen was nominated for the 1965 Tony Award (New York City) for Supporting or Features Actor in a Drama for "The Subject was Roses" and recreated his role in this filmed production.
The Subject Was Roses was the first film Patricia Neal made after suffering three massive and near-fatal strokes, early in 1965. Neal was in a coma for two-and-a-half weeks and underwent emergency brain surgery. Paralyzed on her right side and unable to talk, she had to learn how to use her limbs again, how to speak again, and had to relearn the alphabet in order to spell the simplest of words. By early 1967, her recovery was so remarkable that it was difficult to tell that she'd suffered a stroke at all, although Neal admitted to still having memory problems. In April 1968, while shooting "The Subject Was Roses" in an old warehouse on Manhattan's West 26th Street, Neal reflected on her ordeal to critic Rex Reed: "I hated life for a year and a half, then I started learning how to be a person again and now I've loved life for a year and a half. And I love it a lot."
The "shabby genteel" Bronx apartment in Frank D. Gilroy's largely autobiographical "The Subject Was Roses" was recreated and filmed in a warehouse on New York's West 26th Street. Exterior scenes of the Bronx were filmed in that borough's University Heights section, where Pulitzer-winning playwright Frank D. Gilroy spent the first eighteen years of his life before serving in World War II. The neighborhood had changed a great deal in twenty-plus years and was now "down at the heels" but a number of older residents remembered the Gilroy family from back in the day. For authenticity, crew members rolled back prices in the window of a vegetable store to 1946, posted signs to buy War Bonds, and lined the street with period automobiles. Said one older resident: "They even cleaned up the streets. Humph, it takes a movie company to get this neighborhood cleaned up."
The original Broadway production of "The Subject was Roses" by Frank D. Gilroy opened at the Royale Theater (and four other theaters) in New York on May 25, 1964, ran for 832 performances and won the 1965 Tony Award (New York City) for the Best Play.
The play "The Subject Was Roses" won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1965.