A popular Ziegfeld Follies headliner, forty-something Mae Murray had made a transition to silent films. This film was her second talkie, as an attempt to make this transition, playing the role of "Mrs. Agatha Carraway." She starred most famously in Die lustige Witwe (1925) opposite John Gilbert-and in a wink to the audience makes her first appearance in Bachelor Apartment (1931) to a Merry Widow waltz. However, this film turned out to be her next-to-last, with her final film being High Stakes (1931).
Bachelor Apartment (1931) was the fifth film directed by Lowell Sherman, who directed his first film, a comedy short called "Phipps," in 1929. The combination of actor and director was highly unusual at the time. His directing career showed promise with movies like Sie tat ihm unrecht (1933) and Morgenrot des Ruhms (1933) but was cut short when he died of pneumonia in 1934. At the time of his death, Sherman had just started directing Hollywood's first full-length three-strip Technicolor feature, Becky Sharp (1935). Rouben Mamoulian replaced him and started the film over from scratch.
Bachelor Apartment (1931) was Irene Dunne's third film, after the now-lost musical comedy Leathernecking (1930) and epic western Pioniere des wilden Westens (1931), for which she would be nominated for her first Academy Award®.
The story was written by John Howard Lawson, a Broadway playwright. Though he signed a contract with RKO for one screenplay with an option for three more. Despite this, Lawson was only interested in the theater, not films. He devised the story and screenplay of Bachelor Apartment (1931), but did not think much of the experience, or the film: ""Every day's work on Bachelor Apartment reminded me of my 'almost blunted purpose': instead of bringing new life to the theater, I was perpetrating a stale cinematic joke. In spite of its up-to-date cynicism and zany style, everything about Bachelor Apartment, including its stars, belonged to the Roaring Twenties."
Despite the screen credit given to J. Walter Ruben for adaptation and dialogue, Lawson claimed that the script was filmed as he wrote it. Lawson later went on to write the influential "Theory and Technique of Playwriting and Screenwriting," to become the head of the Screen Writers Guild, to write films such as Algiers (1938), Sahara (1943), and Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947), and then to be one of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten.
Despite the screen credit given to J. Walter Ruben for adaptation and dialogue, Lawson claimed that the script was filmed as he wrote it. Lawson later went on to write the influential "Theory and Technique of Playwriting and Screenwriting," to become the head of the Screen Writers Guild, to write films such as Algiers (1938), Sahara (1943), and Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947), and then to be one of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten.