Trivia

The Broadway play of the same name upon which this film is based opened at the Sam H. Harris Theatre, 226 W. 42nd St. on February 13, 1930 and ran for 289 performances until October. Spencer Tracy played the lead role of John Mears. Clark Gable also played the role in later productions. Both actors were brought to the attention of Hollywood because of their involvement with this play.

The failure of the original copyright holder to renew the film's copyright resulted in it falling into public domain, meaning that virtually anyone could duplicate and sell a VHS/DVD copy of the film. Therefore, many of the versions of this film available on the market are either severely (and usually badly) edited and/or of extremely poor quality, having been duped from second- or third-generation (or more) copies of the film.

The film was refused a UK cinema certificate in 1932.

[Foreword] "The Last Mile" is more than a story of prison and of the condemned. To me it is a story of those men within barred cells, crushed physically, mentally and spiritually between unrelenting forces of man-made laws and man-fixed death. And justly or unjustly found guilty, are they not the victims of man's imperfect conventions, upon which he has erected a social structure of doubtful security?

What is society's responsibility for ever-increasing murders? What shall be done with the murderers? "The Last Mile" does not pretend to give an answer. Society must find its own solution. But murder on the heels of murder is NOT that solution.

Lewis E. Lawes, Warden, Sing Sing Prison, Ossining, New York.

The earliest documented telecast of this film occurred in New York City Friday 3 May 1946 on WCBW (Channel 2); it first aired in in Los Angeles Sunday 18 April 1948 on KTLA (Channel 5), and in Washington DC Sunday 2 May 1948 on WMAL (Channel 7).