Writer Richard Brooks was originally penciled in to direct but was taken off the picture after Clark Gable was cast. He recalls he was told, "Well, now it's a Gable picture, and you can't expect to direct Gable."
Scotty Beckett was signed to play Paul and his photo can be seen on Clark Gable's desk but he was replaced by Darryl Hickman.
There is a scene where two white thugs enter a casino and keep calling the black attendant "George," even after he tells them that's not his name. On Pullman train cars of that era, the white passengers often called all the black porters "George," in honor of George Pullman, who developed the Pullman sleeping car. Many of the porters later said they deeply resented that tradition.
In the opening scene, Sleigh is humming the tune "You Are My Lucky Star." The song was co-written in 1935 by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown. Freed is the film's producer. This film is one of only a few non-musicals Freed produced.
This film did well at the box office, earning MGM a profit of $763,000 ($9.5M in 2022) according to studio records.