An animation sequence supervised by Walt Disney based upon Roald Dahl's short story "The Gremlins" was deleted before the film's release. Producer Samuel Goldwyn and star Danny Kaye hoped to reunite with Disney for Hans Christian Andersen (1952) in 1951, but the effort to have live-action and animated sequences was eventually abandoned. A brief bit of the "Gremlins" sequence appears in Victory Through Air Power (1943).
Virginia Mayo was originally scheduled to play the leading character of Mary Morgan, but it was decided she needed more experience in front of the camera and was replaced by Constance Dowling. Mayo was reduced to performing with The Goldwyn Girls, but was never actually meant to be in the chorus.
Samuel Goldwyn used this film to bring attention to a battle he had been fighting, with the Society of Motion Picture Producers (SIMPP), against theater chain monopolies. The pinnacle of this battle came in Reno, NV, where the reigning theater chain owner refused to pay Goldwyn anything but a flat film rental fee. Goldwyn then converted the El Patio ballroom on the outskirts of Reno into a makeshift theater at his own expense and offered to donate the opening-night box-office receipts to the Reno chapter of the Red Cross. Mary Pickford, a great supporter of the Red Cross and a founding member of SIMPP, attended the opening night to deliver a speech that included the reading of a letter written by Walt Disney, all in a show of support for their joint fight against the practice of denying independent producers a share of the profits from their movies. This publicity stunt made national news and became part of Hollywood legend.