In an interview during filming, Dick Powell admitted that he missed the connection that he had shared with his previous leading lady, Ruby Keeler. "The hardest thing for me to do is listen well. You have to react to what you hear, and as a reactor, I'm dead from the neck up. Ruby Keeler used to react to me, and she was good at it. But yesterday I had to react to Doris Weston while she sang a song in The Singing Marine (1937), and I sank like a chain anchor."
Doris Weston's debut.
When Mr. Fowler gestures to the pictures on his wall of people he made into stars, one of the photos shown is of actress Jane Bryan.
A quail was a term for a local girl, supposedly easy to date (easy as shooting quail). But as the Code took hold, that's about all that could be seen. The inference, though, was fairy obvious.
While the film was in production, an unidentified reporter published an article detailing what books were being read by members of the chorus between takes. Lois Lindsay was reading Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner; Blanche Macdonald was reading Anthony Adverse by Hervey Allen; Jean Gale and Lorraine Grey were both reading The French Quarter by Herbert Asbury; Helen Seamon was reading an unidentified detective novel; Amo Ingraham was reading a cook on Southern cooking as part of her culinary hobby; Eleanor Bayley was reading a photography manual, also pursuant to a hobby; and Melba Marshall was reading Not So Deep as a Well by Dorothy Parker. The syndicated article was titled Extra! Extra! Chorines Can Read, Believe It or Not.