The Hayes Office was shocked and appalled by the scene in which Sammy removes her shirt and displays her bare back to the camera. Director Henry Hathaway assured the Office that it was really a man doubling for Betty Field during that particular moment. Field, as well as John Wayne, corroborated this. Years later, Field revealed that it was indeed her own bare back that was shown.
"The Sheperd of the Hills" play is acted out every day during the summer in Silver Dollar City near Branson, Missouri in an outdoor setting using live animals such as sheep, and recreating the barn-burning scene.
Riding on his horse, Matt Matthews (John Wayne) whistles a traditional English folk tune "The Cuckoo" having been identified by the captions as such. The title of the song has multiple variations, including The Coo-Coo, The Coo-Coo Bird, The Cuckoo Bird, and The Cuckoo Is A Pretty Bird. Lyrics usually include the line (or a slight variation): "The cuckoo is a pretty bird, she sings as she flies; she brings us glad tidings, and she tells us no lies." According to Thomas Goldsmith of The Raleigh News & Observer, the Cuckoo" descended from an old folk ballad; the singer "relates his desires - to gamble, to win, to regain love's affection."
One of over 700 Paramount Productions, filmed between 1929 and 1949, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by Universal ever since; its earliest documented telecast took place in Boston Sunday 18 January 1959 on WBZ (Channel 4); it first aired in Seattle 16 December 1959 on KIRO (Channel 7); at this time, color broadcasting was in its infancy, limited to only a small number of high rated programs, primarily on NBC and NBC affiliated stations, so these movie showings were all still in black-and-white. Viewers were not offered the opportunity to see these movies in their original Technicolor until several years later.