Given that his role as Joe Clay from Days of Wine and Roses (1958) was taken by Jack Lemmon in the successful film adaptation Days of Wine and Roses (1962), Cliff Robertson (Charlie Gordon) bought the rights to the story in the hope that he would also star in the film version. This hope came to fruition seven years later with the production of Charly (1968). Robertson won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, becoming the second of only two actors to win an Oscar for a role that he had originally played on television. The first was Maximilian Schell, who won the same award for his performance as Hans Rolfe in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). Schell originally played the role (under the name Otto Rolfe) in Judgment at Nuremberg (1959).