Lucille Ball and Maureen O'Hara became inseparable friends while shooting this film, and remained lifelong friends until Ball's death in 1989. O'Hara was having lunch with her when Ball first saw her future husband Desi Arnaz.
Lucille Ball met her future husband, Desi Arnaz, while she was shooting the picture. On the very day she first met him, she was made-up to look like she had just emerged from a catfight with scratches, a black eye and bandages which resulted in Arnaz not paying much attention to her. The next time he saw her, she was not in costume and he was instantly smitten.
A critical and commercial failure in its day, RKO ended up losing $400,000 over the film's underperformance.
Though she was usually dubbed in her other musicals, Lucille Ball sang for herself in this film.
Early in the movie, Louis Hayward's and Maureen O'Hara's characters seem instantly smitten with each other. He looks at her and says, "You have blue eyes," but then rejects her by saying, "I don't like girls with blue eyes." Immediately after, he toddles off with Lucille Ball's character. However, Maureen O'Hara's most famous and identifiable feature were her emerald green eyes, and Lucille Ball's eyes were unmistakably blue. That whole O'Hara's-blue-eyes theme gets repeated several times throughout the movie. It's a good thing it was filmed the black and white.