In 1938, Leo McCarey was having a hard time coming up with an idea for his next film. His wife suggested they take a vacation to spur his creativity, so they spent three months in Europe with no success. On the trip back, their first ocean trip from Europe to the U.S., they got up early on the last day to catch the first sight of land. McCarey was complaining to his wife that the trip had not worked, when he caught sight of the Statue of Liberty and the plot for Love Affair (1939) sprung into his head: "Suppose you and I were talking to each other when the boat sailed from England, and we got to know each other on the trip. We felt ourselves inseparable. By the time the trip was over, we were madly in love with each other, but by the time the boat docked we have found out that each is obligated to somebody else."

McCarey developed the story with Mildred Cram, then turned the screenplay over to Delmer Daves and Donald Ogden Stewart. He wrote the male lead for Charles Boyer. Both Helen Hayes and Greta Garbo wanted the female lead, but he cast Irene Dunne on his wife's suggestion. The result was a major hit, winning Oscar® nominations for Best Picture, Best Original Story, Best Art Direction, Best Song, Dunne and supporting actress Maria Ouspenskaya, cast as Boyer's grandmother.

In the '50s, McCarey had hit a career slump following the box office failure of his anti-Communist thriller My Son John (1952). Struck by the number of people who had called Love Affair the best romantic film they had ever seen, he decided the time was ripe for a remake. He also wanted to see if he was still as good a writer and director as he had been.

Daves came back to work on the screenplay of An Affair to Remember. Stewart helped as well but without credit; he had been a member of the Hollywood Ten and was still blacklisted.

McCarey originally wanted Ingrid Bergman for the female lead.

McCarey offered Cary Grant the male lead because he wanted to expand the comic scenes during the first half of the picture. Although Grant had misgivings about stepping into Boyer's shoes, he accepted the role in An Affair to Remember because he wanted to work again with Deborah Kerr and McCarey, who had helped make him a star in The Awful Truth (1937).

After Kerr's success mouthing Marni Nixon's singing in The King and I (1956), Wald suggested making her character a singer. They even had Nixon dub her vocals again.

In early interviews, Wald predicted the film would be a success because it had been so long since Hollywood had produced a sophisticated romance like those made in the '30s. He also thought the cast would help sell the film, since Grant and Kerr were two of the few actors who could make that type of material work. He said, "Today's actors either look good and talk lousy, or they look lousy and talk good."

The film's working title was Love Affair. When 20th Century-Fox's lawyers discovered that Columbia Pictures owned the rights to that title, it was changed to An Affair to Remember.

by Frank Miller