Tone-deaf Gloria Grahame sang without dubbing. Her songs had to be edited together from recordings made almost literally note by note.
The song "Kansas City" was edited for censors. Will sang it, "I could swear that she was padded from her shoulders to her heel. And then she started dancing and her dancing made me feel that every single thing she had was absolutely real." In the original play script it went, "I could swear that she was padded from her shoulders to her heels. And later in the second act when she began to peel. She proved that everything she had was absolutely real."
Finding "corn as high as an elephant's eye" proved to be quite a challenge. Since filming was to take place out of season, no tall cornfields were to be found anywhere. The job was given to the people of the University of Arizona Agricultural Department, who planted each stalk in individual containers and held their breath. With rain and good luck, the corn grew to a height of 16 feet, causing Oscar Hammerstein to quip: "The corn is now as high as the eye of an elephant on top of another elephant."
Although James Mitchell and Bambi Linn danced the parts of Curly and Laury in the Dream Ballet, Rod Steiger did his own dancing in that sequence because there was no one who looked enough like him from the back. Despite his initial uncertainties, and after considerable coaching from choreographer Agnes de Mille, Steiger actually did a credible job, later calling it one of the biggest challenges he ever had.