The screenplay for The Long, Hot Summer, written by husband and wife team Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr., was based primarily on William Faulkner's 1940 novel The Hamlet. Adapted into a steamy story about a shady drifter being pushed into marriage with the prim daughter of a local businessman, The Long, Hot Summer had all the ingredients for a hit film: colorful characters, striking dialogue and enough heat and innuendo to melt the ice cubes in a tall glass of southern iced tea.

Producer Jerry Wald, who was fresh off the hit potboiler Peyton Place (1957), put the project together through Twentieth Century-Fox. Director Martin Ritt had only recently begun working in Hollywood again after having been blacklisted for five years during the Communist witch hunts, a direct result of the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings. He was looking for a strong project to help re-establish himself in the industry and was hired to direct The Long, Hot Summer.

To play the part of the slick and disreputable Ben Quick, Martin Ritt first considered Marlon Brando and Robert Mitchum. Paul Newman, still relatively new to Hollywood, was fresh off his triumph playing boxer Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) when he read the script for The Long, Hot Summer. He loved the part of Ben and felt that he understood him. "He had a lifetime of having a bad reputation and for no cause," said Newman in a 2001 interview, "so he just decided that that's what he was going to be. It's like when you're a kid and someone called you a name and you decide to be one. And that's what that character was." Newman wanted the part, and as soon as Martin Ritt saw his enthusiasm, he was won over. Newman, who was under contract with Warner Bros. at the time, was loaned out to Twentieth Century-Fox in order to make the film.

Actress Eva Marie Saint was originally cast as the object of Ben's affection, Clara. However, when she became pregnant, Ritt had to replace her. Joanne Woodward happily took the juicy part. Woodward was also new to Hollywood, having first begun her career on the New York stage like Newman. The Long, Hot Summer was fresh on the heels of her Oscar-winning performance in The Three Faces of Eve (1957), though she wouldn't receive the Academy Award until after The Long, Hot Summer was completed.

The Long, Hot Summer was not the first time that the paths of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward had crossed. The pair had met during a 1952 stage production of Picnic in New York. Newman was married to someone else at the time with children, but the two had hit it off immediately and fate seemed to keep bringing them back together over the years. By the time Newman and Woodward met up again to make The Long, Hot Summer Newman's marriage to Jackie Witte was over and the two were free to openly be a couple. Their onscreen chemistry was real and not an act.

Orson Welles came on board to play the Big Daddy-like Will Varner. Welles, who was always struggling to come up with money to finance his own personal creative projects, took the acting job for the paycheck.

Handsome Anthony Franciosa was cast to play Will's ne'er-do-well son Jody. Actress Shelley Winters, Franciosa's wife at the time, recalled in her 1989 memoir Shelley II that he was in a bad frame of mind when he agreed to make The Long, Hot Summer. Shortly before, Franciosa had been arrested for assaulting a photographer who had ambushed him and Winters. Now the photographer, whom Winters described as "vindictive" and "spiteful", was taking Franciosa to court over it, the date for which would come up during production. Winters herself claimed that producer Jerry Wald all but promised her the part of Jody's sexy wife Eula when he hired her husband. When 21-year-old Lee Remick was hired instead of her, she was upset.

Rounding out the remarkable cast was Angela Lansbury, who would play Will's saucy gal-pal Minnie Littlejohn and Richard Anderson, who would play mama's boy Alan Stewart.

Invoking his "method" Actors Studio training, Paul Newman traveled to Louisiana before shooting began in order to soak up the local atmosphere. It was an experience he hoped would help inform his portrayal of Ben Quick. A few weeks later, the rest of the cast and crew would join him on location and work would begin on The Long, Hot Summer.

by Andrea Passafiume