On lunch break one day, W.C. Fields went to his dressing room to start on a new bottle of whiskey he had saved for that purpose. Apparently, someone beat him to it, as the bottle had been opened and about half of it had been drunk. Fields immediately ran outside and roared at the crew, "Who took the cork out of my lunch?"
The saloon was the same set used for Destry Rides Again (1939), which had wrapped production in late October 1939, just before this film began shooting in November.
Dick Foran, who was being paid by the week, would go to Mae West and tell her that W.C. Fields was rewriting his lines to give himself more screen time and to try to steal the film from her. Then he would go to Fields and tell him the same thing about West. In this manner he was able to extend his employment from a few weeks to several months, as both Fields and West - who didn't like each other - would hold up production while they would rewrite their scenes.
As he leaves at the end, Cuthbert J. Twillie (W.C. Fields) says to Flower Belle, "Why don't you come up and see me sometime?", a reference to Mae West's famous line in an earlier film, She Done Him Wrong (1933).
W.C. Fields walked off the set over what director Edward F. Cline felt was a minor disagreement, but when it was clear after two weeks that he was not coming back to finish the film, nearly one-third was shot using a double. The double used is unknown. It could have been John Sinclair, who had doubled for him in Poppy (1936), or David Sharpe, who was his stunt double in later films. The double wore a plastic mask and most of the shots were long shots.