Helen Barclay was originally cast as "Eleanor Stafford" but was replaced by Martha Sleeper. George Brent and Joel McCrea were to be the male leads and even accompanied a crew on location in Hemet, California, but they were not in the film.
Adapted from the Broadway play "Trigger" by Lula Vollmer. It was directed by Katharine Hepburn's good friend George Cukor and opened at the Little Theatre in New York on December 6, 1927 and ran for 47 performances. Claiborne Foster played the lead. In the opening night cast were Sara Haden and Louis Mason, both of whom are also in the movie, and Walter Connolly and Minor Watson. Also in the stage cast as Eleanor Stafford was Natalie Schafer, best known to today's audiences as "Mrs. Howell" on TV's Gilligan's Island.
The rights to the play "Trigger" were purchased with Dorothy Jordan in mind for the lead. However, Katharine Hepburn agreed to star on the condition that she could leave for New York on November 16, 1933 to appear in the play "The Lake". Shooting of the two final scenes ran about 6 hours late on November 15, 1933, but director John Cromwell was dissatisfied with the results and wanted to reshoot them. Miss Hepburn refused at first, citing the terms of her contract. She then demanded, and received, $10,000 (in addition to her $50,000 salary) to stay an extra day for the reshoot.