Trivia

Author Christopher Isherwood, who created the character of Sally Bowles for a 1937 novella, enjoyed the attention the movie brought to his career, but he felt Liza Minnelli was too talented for the role. According to him, Sally Bowles was based on Jean Ross, a 19-year-old amateur singer and aspiring actress who lived under the delusion that she had star quality, the antithesis of Judy Garland's daughter.

The film won 8 Oscars, though not the Academy Award for Best Picture. It lost Best Picture as well as Best Adapted Screenplay to The Godfather (1972). As of 2022, this picture still holds the record for winning the most Oscars without winning Best Picture.

The character of Sally Bowles was based on Jean Ross, an aspiring actress, singer, and writer who had an abortion while working as a cabaret singer in Weimar Berlin. Ross was displeased with Christopher Isherwood's portrayal of her as apolitical and antisemitic. A devout Stalinist, she was a lifelong member of the Communist Party and later was a war correspondent in the Spanish Civil War. One of her many sexual partners in the late 1930s was Claud Cockburn, the father of journalist Alexander Cockburn, who described her as "a gentle, cultivated, and very beautiful woman, not a bit like the vulgar vamp displayed by Liza Minnelli." Claud Cockburn's granddaughter is actress Olivia Wilde.

"Tomorrow Belongs to Me" was written by John Kander and Fred Ebb in the style of a traditional German song to stir up patriotism for "the fatherland." It has often been mistaken for a genuine Nazi anthem and led to the songwriters being wrongly accused of antisemitism despite the fact that both Kander and Ebb were Jewish. "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" is the only song not sung in the Kit Kat Club.

Following the success of 1972 film, Jean Ross (who inspired the character of Sally Bowles) was hounded by journalists before her death in 1973. She bitterly noted that reporters always claimed to seek knowledge "about Berlin in the Thirties" and yet they did not wish "to know about the unemployment or the poverty or the Nazis marching through the streets. All they want to know is how many men I went to bed with."