Paul Newman
Jack Lemmon originally was going to play Luke. During the development process, Lemmon realized he was not right for the part and briefly entertaining the idea of up-and-coming actor Telly Savalas, Lemmon realized that Newman would be perfect for the role. Newman wound up earning a Best Actor Oscar nomination in a tight race that also included Dustin Hoffman for The Graduate, Warren Beatty as Clyde Barrow, and a dying Spencer Tracy. Yet Newman wound up losing when the award went to Rod Steiger in part because of his great performance as the Sheriff of In the Heat of the Night and partly as a makeup for the egregious oversight of Steiger’s haunting performance in The Pawnbroker the year before.
Strother Martin
Martin was and would remain a character actor primarily sterotyped as Southerners. He gets to say the most line of dialogue in the movie, but it is quite arguable that without his idionsyncratic delivery of the failure to communicate assertion that it would not have wound up placing highly on the American Film Institute list of 100 best movie quotes.
George Kennedy
Although another character actor, Aldo Ray, turned in a promising audition for the pivotal role of Dragline, the part eventually went to George Kennedy and change the trajectory of his career. The only Academy Award the film actually earned went to Kennedy as Best Supporting Actor. Later, he would credit winning the award with meaning he no longer had to play heavies and villains anymore.
Jo Van Fleet
Van Fleet was cast as Paul Newman's character's mother despite that meaning in real life she would have been just 11 years old when giving birth. Van Fleet's movie career was marked by playing mothers to actors only slightly younger; she was also cast as James Dean's mom in East of Eden.
Morgan Woodward
Everything about Boss Godfrey is intended to signify pure malevolence His eyes are continually hidden behind eyeglasses and he is a man of ridiculously few words. That latter trait was not in the original script. Though Woodward looked imposing, the director felt his voice did not match the character and enhanced his imposing presence by cutting his dialogue.
Joy Harmon
A movie about chain gang prisoners does not offer much opportunity for female roles and, as such, Harmon and Van Fleet are about it. Harmon plays a teenage girl who temps and teases the prisoners while very suggestively washing a nearby car. For the scenes where the prisoners actually appear in the shot, however, another girl wearing a trenchcoat was utilized. Harmon retired from acting in 1973 and has since been the owner of Aunt Joy's Cakes.
