Theodore Dreiser's novel was based on the actual 1906 murder case of Chester Gillette, convicted of drowning his girlfriend Grace Brown in Big Moose Lake in upstate New York. Gillette was executed in the electric chair on 30 March 1908.
The mother of Grace Brown, the real-life murder victim, filed a $150,000 libel suit against Paramount in 1934. The suit was settled out of court.
Theodore Dreiser sued Paramount for misrepresenting his novel by transforming it into an ordinary murder story. The judge ruled in favor of Paramount; Dreiser's motion to prevent release of the film was denied.
The movie was banned in England, South Africa and Italy because of reference to abortion. Other states required allusions to abortion to be deleted before release.
One of the very few feature films to be dubbed in Swedish. The audience, however, did not take to Swedish voices in an American film and preferred the subtitled version. Since then, subtitling has been the general practice in Sweden, with the exception of animated films and children's films (even then, an option of seeing the original version is usually available).