The title alludes to the Marven Gardens in Margate, New Jersey, and one of the properties in the Monopoly board game, which was based on the streets of Atlantic City.

Many of the grand hotels shown in the film's exterior scenes were demolished during the next few years to make way for the new generation of casino-hotels that were built after the legalization of gambling.

Scatman Crothers co-starred, with Nicholson in the lead role, in Miloš Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980).

Co-star Ellen Burstyn had worked in the TV series Gunsmoke, in which Dern had also appeared, and soon achieved fame with her starring role in William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973).

The film was one of the few screen appearances made by Julia Anne Robinson (Jessica), who died in an apartment fire in Eugene, Oregon, in 1975, aged 24.

[5][6] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, calling it "an original, individual, and often frustrating movie that takes a lot of chances and wins on about sixty percent of them.

"[8] Roger Greenspun of The New York Times panned the film, writing that "Rafelson's kind of poetic realism, an accuracy in the treatment of unexpected settings, looked like quality to some in Five Easy Pieces two years back.

"[9] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called it "a curious, stunningly cinematic, intricately structured, intensely atmospheric new film", adding, "There seems no end to the season's really extraordinary acting jobs and Marvin Gardens gives us five—count 'em five.

"[10] Richard Combs of The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote "Brilliantly constructed by Rafelson and screenwriter Jacob Brackman as a fable of imperfect lives in which nothing ever comes to fruition, The King of Marvin Gardens creates a fragmented, incomplete puzzle (with visual and verbal puns slyly hinting that there might be a key), a game in which no one finally sweeps the board.