"Lux Radio Theater" broadcast a 60 minute radio adaptation of the movie on
November 9, 1942 with Veronica Lake reprising her film role.
Preston Sturges had originally intended to use a clip from a Charles Chaplin film for the church sequence, but Chaplin wouldn't give permission. In an earlier scene, Joel McCrea does parody the Little Tramp character. The cartoon eventually used was Walt Disney's Playful Pluto.
Preston Sturges: Studio director, on the set of 'The Girl's period movie. He is seen in the background when she reads the newspaper and throws up her hands in delight.
Paul Jones, the associate producer, appears as the portrait of "Dear Joseph", the dead husband, early in the film.
Veronica Lake made this movie while pregnant.
In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #61 Greatest Movie of All Time. It was the first inclusion of this film on the list.
In the airplane scene, the author of the book "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" is shown to be "Sinclair Beckstein", an amalgamation of the names of authors Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, and John Steinbeck.
John L. Sullivan plans to make a movie entitled "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" - a title borrowed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen for their 2000 film.
NAACP Secretary Walter White wrote a letter to Preston Sturges congratulating him for his "dignified and decent treatment of Negroes in this scene."
Not only was 'Veronica Lake' pregnant during the making of this movie, she was between six and eight months pregnant. Production took place from June 12 to July 22 1941, and her daughter Elaine Detlie was born on August 21, 1941. The only other people involved in the production who knew of her condition were the costume designer, Edith Head, and Louise Sturges, wife of Preston. Miss Head designed costumes to hide the condition. Miss Lake was afraid that she would not be allowed to make the movie if her advanced state of pregnancy was revealed, owing to the physical demands of the role.
One of over 700 Paramount Productions, filmed between 1929 and 1949, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by Universal ever since.
Reportedly, Preston Sturges got the idea for the movie from stories of John Garfield living the life of a hobo, riding freight trains and hitchhiking his way cross-country for a short period in the 1930s.
The film's opening dedication, "To the memory of those who made us laugh: the motley mountebanks, the clowns, the buffoons, in all times and nations, whose efforts have lightened our burden a little, this picture is affectionately dedicated." with the added phrase "...in this cockeyed caravan..." was initially to be spoken by Joel McCrea in an epilogue as if it was to be the prologue for the comedy he intended to make. In the original script the prologue Preston Sturges initially wrote was, "This is the story of a man who wanted to wash an elephant. The elephant darn near ruined him."
The movie's poster was as #19 of "The 25 Best Movie Posters Ever" by Premiere.