Producer David O. Selznick initially considered filming this movie over a period of several years, casting a young actress in the role of Jennie and shooting portions of the film over time as the actress grew older in real life. (Shirley Temple, then under contract to Selznick, was reportedly intended for the role, had the movie been filmed that way.) In the end, however, Selznick abandoned the idea as too risky and difficult to film properly.
After the film flopped at the box-office, the film was re-released under the title "Tidal Wave" in 1950, marketing it to a different audience in the hopes of making a profit. The re-release also flopped.
The portrait of Jennie supposedly painted by Joseph Cotten's character, Eben Adams, was in reality created by noted portrait artist Robert Brackman. Jennifer Jones came in for more than a dozen sittings in Brackman's Connecticut studio. Brackman was obliged to paint, not only one, but two versions as the first one, described as "lush" and "opulent" by the artist, was scrapped after script changes necessitated a completely new and more simple one. A black-and-white photo of the first version can be seen in one of the books on Brackman. The painting was a prized possession of producer Selznick and hung in his home from 1946 until his death.
Bernard Herrmann was hired to write an original background score and did compose several themes, but due to various production delays as well as the fact that Herrmann was tiring of David O. Selznick's demands, he dropped out and was replaced by Dimitri Tiomkin who, at the insistence of Selznick, ended up using themes by Claude Debussy. At the time Tiomkin was condemned by his colleagues for his adaptations. All that remains of Herrmann's contribution is the haunting song sung by Jennie entitled "Where I Come From, Nobody Knows".
This film essentially marked the end of David O. Selznick's career as a powerhouse Hollywood producer, and he often regretted having embarked on the project (although it received many good reviews and has always been popular on television). The film went steeply over budget and its schedule became extremely elongated. Location shooting in New York proved immensely difficult, and Selznick kept insisting on script rewrites, mostly undertaken by himself. He quarreled with many key crew members, even firing his long-time editor and assistant Hal C. Kern - this was a movie he regretted immediately and ever after. Bernard Herrmann resigned as composer for the film because he had to move on to other projects, whilst the cameraman Joseph H. August died on the set in September of 1947. There were also many re-takes after the end of the main shooting period and the last shot was taken over a year after August's death in October of 1948, just a couple of months before the film's opening. It had actually cost more than Selznick's most famous film, Gone with the Wind (1939), despite being much smaller in scale and less than half the length. It flopped at the box-office, following another expensive Selznick failure, The Paradine Case (1947); he was forced to wind up his production company and made only one more film in his life, almost a decade later. This was the remake, A Farewell to Arms (1957) - another flop.