This television production leaves out one of the original stage play's most controversial lines, when the hero, overhearing the theme music from "Sunset Boulevard" (1950), patronizingly remarks, "Ah! The kitsch of Hollywood!" - a very strange remark to make about either Franz Waxman's acclaimed music or Billy Wilder's savage film. Ironically, many years later, the author of "Tales From Hollywood", Christopher Hampton, collaborated (as librettist and lyric-writer) on Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage musical based on the Wilder film, which many felt had indeed reduced a brilliant screen original to the level of theatrical kitsch.
Odon von Horvath, the central character in this play, was a real person, but none of the events of the play ever happened to him. He was killed in a bizarre accident (a tree fell on him) in 1938, and never went to America.