They Met in Bombay was the third film Rosalind Russell and Clark Gable made together. In the first two, Forsaking All Others (1934) and China Seas (1935), Russell wasn't Gable's leading lady. Joan Crawford stole his heart in Forsaking All Others and in China Seas, Russell played Gable's former girlfriend, who faced some tough competition in Jean Harlow. But given the opportunity, Russell genuinely enjoyed working with Gable and unlike some of his co-stars, was at ease playing love scenes opposite him. No director ever had to give him directions in a love scene. He was a very graceful person...much like a ballet dancer. "He was beautiful to play a love scene with," Russell commented. She also recalled how much difficulty she normally had filming romantic scenes. "Love scenes...(were) murder for me," said Russell. "The only man who could make a love scene comfortable was Clark Gable."
This film did well at the box office, earning MGM a profit of $350,000 (about $6.4M in 2021) according to studio records.
At the beginning of the movie, a friend of Gerald Meldrick is making an imitation of the Star of Asia. The film doesn't say what kind of gem it is, but there is a real Star of Asia. It's a 330-carat star sapphire. It is in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The deep blue gem was mined in Burma (modern Myanmar) and is said to have belonged to the Maharajah of Jodhpur at one time. An even larger blue sapphire is the Star of India. The 563-carat gem is one of the largest of its kind in the world. It has a colorful history that includes being heisted in 1964 from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The unusual stone, with stars on both sides, was recovered the following year. It was mined in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) around the year 1600, but much of its past before the 20th century is clouded.
Final film of Jessie Ralph.