The first of four classic Dick Tracy feature films produced by RKO from 1945 to 1947, although Ralph Byrd had previously starred in the four fifteen-episode Dick Tracy serials at Republic Pictures from 1937 to 1941.
RKO paid Dick Tracy creator Chester Gould $10,000 for the film rights to the character, the equivalent of over $163,000 in 2022.
The scene of Splitface stabbing a victim on the rooftop, although filmed in a long shot, was considered an unusually graphically violent scene for the period. It was apparently passed by the censors.
Dick Tracy drives a 1939 Buick sedan; the police car is a 1939 Dodge. At the time of production, the first of the post-WWII 1946 models had not yet rolled off the assembly line.
The distinctive painting on the wall of the vestibule of Tracy's residence is the same one Irene Dunne proudly painted over ten years earlier that hung over the mantelpiece in the RKO Radio film, This Man Is Mine (1934).
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