When this film was broadcast on Spanish TV in 1985, in a remote mountain village near the French border where most of the inhabitants were male it inspired them to place an ad in some papers, requesting potential female partners from all over the country to come and marry the lonely country boys. As a result, a caravan of coaches loaded with dozens of young women from all over Spain turned up at the village for the blind date, and that day many of those lonely boys found the women of their lives.
Kanab, Utah, where many of the wagon train scenes were filmed, was no stranger to the Hollywood scene. Scores of movies were made there, with the stunning natural scenery as a backdrop. Today, (2021) in addition to still being a film location, it is home to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, one of the largest such enterprises in the U.S.
Denise Darcel's French-language dialog includes a few words which prove that no one in the 1950s version of the Hays Office understood French. Some of the terms she used while angry at "Buck Wyatt" would never have gotten past the censors in English.
Although the film was shot almost entirely in outdoor locations, the Quackenbush-rainstorm scene was shot on a sound stage in order to have complete control over the night lighting, waterworks, and flooding.
According to his autobiography, Frank Capra had planned to direct the film himself and cast Gary Cooper in the lead, but later sold his story to his neighbor, director William A. Wellman.