Trivia

Sturges helped invent the gadget sofa demonstrated in the department store scene.

If adjusted for inflation, the $25,000 grand prize would be equivalent to approximately $544,837 in 2023.

This film was based on a play called "A Cup of Coffee" which Preston Sturges wrote in the summer of 1931. The play also features a character named Jimmy MacDonald who works for a coffee company and enters a contest for a rival company with the slogan "If you can't sleep at night it isn't the coffee, it's the bunk." Much of the play's plot and supporting characters were changed for the film, but the dialogue between Jimmy and his girlfriend about his slogan is repeated almost verbatim. "A Cup of Coffee" was never produced in Sturges' lifetime, but it was eventually staged by the New York theater company Soho Rep in a production that opened in March of 1988, fifty-seven years after the play was written and twenty-nine years after Sturges' death.

The set to this movie was open because Sturges loved visitors to observe what he was shooting.

Dick Powell's character wins the slogan contest of Maxford House Coffee, a wink at Maxwell House Coffee and which has its own radio show in the movie. Maxwell House showed its sense of humor by having Dick Powell, one month after "Christmas in July" was released, host the "Maxwell House Coffee Time Thanksgiving Show."

Preston Sturges: as one of the men listening to the radio while the announcer says "...first prize of $25,000." He has a pencil behind his right ear and is the leftmost man onscreen. The scene occurs within the first three minutes of the film.