Trivia for
Il gattopardo (1963) More at IMDbPro »

• Luchino Visconti wanted Laurence Olivier for the title role but his producers insisted on a movie star with clout at the box office and thus, Burt Lancaster was cast.
  
  
• Warren Beatty flew to Rome to meet Visconti with the possibility of playing Tancredi but turned it down. He later told his publicist that Visconti had been 'begging him' to star in the movie.
  
  
• Such was Visconti's attention to detail that Claudia Cardinale had a period embroidered handkerchief tucked into her purse, a prop that was never seen on camera.
  
  
• Although Claudia Cardinale's dialogue was dubbed by Solveyg D'Assunta, her voice can still be heard in some scenes, in particular when her and Alain Delon run around the empty house; her deep and hearty laugh being quite distinctive.
  
  
• The title "Il Gattopardo" literally translates from Italian as "The Serval". In France, the film was released as "Le Guépard" ("The Cheetah"), and in UK and USA as "The Leopard". The serval, the cheetah and the leopard are in fact three different species of felines.
  
  
• 'Darryl Zanuck', whose studio put up financing for the film, did not want Lancaster to wear a mustache.
  
  
• Horst Buchholz turned down the role of Tancredi.
  
  
• While the film was photographed in Technicolor's large format Technirama wide screen system, 20th Century-Fox changed the credit on their prints to reflect it was in CinemaScope and Color by DeLuxe.
  
  
• Italian censorship visa # 39917 delivered on 26-3-1963.
  
  

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