Did You Know?

Frank Capra first became aware of the play when he caught a performance of it when he was in New York in 1937 for the premiere of Lost Horizon. He tried to persuade Columbia boss Harry Cohn to buy the rights but Cohn refused, partly because he baulked at the prospect of shelling out what he considered to be the exorbitant sum of $200,000 for the rights, but mainly because he was still smarting from the lost battles he'd had with Capra over the final edit of Lost Horizon. Capra too was out of sorts with Cohn as he objected strongly to the Columbia boss trying to market the Jean Arthur film If You Could Only Cook in Britain as one of his own. A court case ensued, only being resolved in November 1937, with the proviso that Columbia buy the rights to the play and assign the project to Capra.

A 1938 feature film usually ran to 8,000 feet of film. Frank Capra shot 329,000 feet for this one.

Lionel Barrymore would receive injections every hour to help relieve the pain of his arthritis.

The original play by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was still running on Broadway when the film opened.

Shortly before filming began, Lionel Barrymore lost the use of his legs to crippling arthritis and a hip injury. To accommodate him, the script was altered so that his character had a sprained ankle, and Barrymore did the film on crutches.

Frank Capra cast James Stewart based on his performance in Navy Blue and Gold.

Lionel Barrymore plays Jean Arthur's grandfather in the film. In reality, he was only 22 years her senior.

Ann Miller once said that doing the ballet moves for this movie were extremely painful and she would often be crying in between takes. She never told anybody the reason why and James Stewart, assuming she was upset about something, would have boxes of candy sent to her to make her feel better.

This movie reunited Lionel Barrymore (Grandpa Vanderhof) and Donald Meek (Mr. Poppins) who had previously starred together in the movie, Mark of the Vampire.

In the French-dubbed version made in 1938, the names of some of the characters were changed: "Anthony P. Kirby" (played by Edward Arnold) became "Alexandre P. Kirby"; "Essie Carmichael" (played by Ann Miller) was rechristened "Sylvie Carmichael". Similarly "Penny Sycamore" (played by Spring Byington) became "Jenny Sycomore"; "Ed Carmichael" (portrayed by Dub Taylor) became "Ned Carmichael" and finally Lillian Yarbo's character named "Rheba" in the original version was renamed "Rebeccah".