Director Otto Preminger was fired and replaced by Alfred L. Werker after 20th Century-Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck complained that he hadn't followed the script while directing a scene with Freddie Bartholomew and a dog. Although Preminger at first tried to remain calm, insisting that he had followed the script, Zanuck continued to argue with him until Preminger launched into a screaming tirade at him and stormed out of the screening room. The next day Preminger returned to Fox to find the lock on his office changed and his name taken off the door, and his parking space moved to a faraway location on the lot. Although he still had 11 months in his two-year contract, Preminger soon left Fox.
Although the film was released in sepia tone, the print on the Fox Movie channel was in black-and-white. The 90 min 13 sec version on the 2012 Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment "Cinema Archives" DVD is also in black-and-white gray scale.
The film takes place in 1747. The novel was set in 1751, even though Colin Roy Campbell ("The Red Fox") was murdered in 1752.
David Balfour does not meet his Uncle Ebenezer until almost halfway through this version.
Mary Gordon (Mrs. MacDonald) would later appear in Kidnapped (1948), another adaptation of the 1886 novel by Robert Louis Stevenson.