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FILM 1175: WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?

TRIVIA: In this film, Elizabeth Taylor does an exaggerated impression of Bette Davis saying a line from Beyond the Forest (1949): "What a dump!" In an interview with Barbara Walters, Bette Davis said that in the film, she really did not deliver the line in such an exaggerated manner. She said it in a more subtle, low-key manner, but it has passed into legend that she said it the way Elizabeth Taylor's delivered it in this film. During the Barbara Walters interview, the clip of Bette Davis delivering the line from Beyond the Forest (1949) was shown to prove that Davis was correct. However, since people expected Bette Davis to deliver the line the way Elizabeth Taylor had, she always opened her in-person, one woman show by saying the line in a campy, exaggerated manner: "WHAT ... A... DUMP!!!". It always brought down the house. "I imitated the imitators", Davis said.

Every credited member of the cast received an Academy Award nomination.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) became the first motion picture in Academy Awards and cinema history to be nominated for every Academy Award category in which it was eligible, including Best Adapted Screenplay (Lehman), Director (Nichols), all the acting categories (Burton, Taylor, Segal, and Dennis), and Picture of the Year (Lehman), since Cimarron (1931).

Edward Albee said he came up with the title when he saw the phrase written on a men's room wall in a New York tavern.

Elizabeth Taylor gained nearly 30 pounds to play the role of a middle-aged wife just for this film.

In her A&E Biography special, Elizabeth Taylor remarked that her performance as Martha remains her personal best.

The fourth of eleven films that Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton starred in together.

Richard Burton was heavily criticized for playing his character with an English accent.

According to Edward Albee, the only thing he doesn't like about the film is the over-use of over-head shots. He did say, however, that he envisioned Bette Davis and James Mason as Martha and George rather than Taylor and Burton. If Davis had been cast, she would have ended up parodying a line from one of her old films ("What a dump!") in the opening scene.