Judy Garland's deleted song "Last Night When We Were Young" still survives in excellent condition and is included on the DVD box set "That's Entertainment! The Complete Collection" from Warner Home Video.
Charles Smith, who plays an uncredited role as a member of the barbershop quartet also played the role of Rudy in the The Shop Around the Corner, an early version of the storyline for this movie.
Buster Keaton was working as a gag writer at MGM when this movie was made. The filmmakers approached him to devise a way for a violin to get broken that would be both comic and plausible. Keaton came up with an appropriate fall, and the filmmakers then realized he was the only one who would be able to execute it properly, so they cast him in the film. Keaton also devised the sequence in which Van Johnson inadvertently wrecks Judy Garland's hat, and coached Johnson intensively in how to perform the scene. This was the first MGM film Keaton appeared in since being fired from the studio in 1933.
June Allyson and Frank Sinatra were originally supposed to play the leads, but Sinatra was unavailable and Allyson dropped out when she became pregnant.
Liza Minnelli appears in the final scene. She's the little girl with Van Johnson and her mother, Judy Garland.
In 1946, Gene Kelly was scheduled to play Andy.
In the scene where Judy and Van Johnson meet in the restaurant, the woman sitting directly behind Judy is wearing the same green and plaid costume worn by Cyd Charisse in The Harvey Girls, which also starred Judy Garland.
The deleted song "Last Night When We Were Young" (music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by E.Y. Harburg), sung by a heartbroken Judy Garland in her bedroom, already had been cut from an earlier picture:Metropolitan, vocalized by Lawrence Tibbett, who also made a commercial recording for Victor. Miss Garland, after discovering the Tibbett record, considered this impassioned lament her favorite song. Judy's prerecording was issued on several albums by MGM Records over two decades, beginning in 1951 with the 10-inch LP "Judy Garland Sings." On CD, the audio is featured on the Rhino Handmade release of the soundtrack, which is paired with the score of Miss Garland's Summer Stock. On three notable occasions, Miss Garland returned to "Last Night When We Were Young": together with acclaimed jazz pianist Joe Bushkin on her half-hour CBS-TV special (with Nelson Riddle serving as the arranger and conductor), broadcast the evening of October 8, 1956 on
The film's working title was "The Girl From Chicago".
This was based on the movie The Shop Around the Corner.