Lionel Barrymore walked with two canes in this film. He suffered from arthritis since at least 1928, but his incapacity in this and later films was due to a broken hip. He first broke the hip in 1936 when a drawing table fell on it, then broke it again early in 1937 when he tripped over a cable while filming Saratoga (1937). He reportedly also broke a kneecap in that fall. The hip never healed and he would later be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
The sculpture of a Native American was the figurehead of USS Delaware which was burned in 1861 at the Gosport Navy Yard to prevent its capture by the Confederacy at the start of the Civil War. In 1868, the saved figurehead, officially titled Tamanend, Chief of the Delaware Indians, was transferred to the United States Naval Academy. In 1929, the sculpture was cast in bronze at the U.S. Naval Gun Factory, and presented by the Class of 1891. As Tamanend was a pacifist and friend to William Penn, he did not inspire the midshipmen of the Academy, and they eventually named the figurehead Tecumseh after the Shawnee warrior chief and ally of the British, who was killed in the Battle of the Thames during the War of 1812. To this day, Midshipmen toss pennies at the monument for good luck in their examinations and Army-Navy football games.
While the Southern Institute where Ash began his football career is fictitious, Hardin-Simmons, whom Ash dazzled according to the newspaper headline, is an actual university located in Abilene, Texas.
Jimmy Stewart's character is a Sailor in the Fireman's Branch serving aboard the heavy cruiser USS Northampton (CA-26) when he is accepted to the Naval Academy. Northampton was sunk during WW II by Japanese torpedoes on 30 November 1942, during the Battle of Tassafaronga. One of her surviving crew members was Radioman, and later Academy Award winning actor, Jason Robards, Jr.