Trivia

To induce crying, Jackie Cooper was fooled into it by director Norman Taurog (his uncle, having married Cooper's mother's sister). Taurog yelled out, "Where's that dog? Just go shoot him!" (the dog was Cooper's own). Somebody got a gun with a blank in it, went behind the truck where the dog had been taken, and fired the gun. It worked, though a little too well. It took Cooper a very long time to stop crying, even after the scene was over and the director tried to kindly tell him they were just fooling; they only did that to get Cooper to cry for the scene. In addition, Cooper said he lost a lot of respect for his uncle that day; he seemingly never forgave him for this cruel stunt. Cooper's autobiography, published in 1982, was titled "Please Don't Shoot My Dog" in reference to the incident.

At age 9, Jackie Cooper became the youngest person to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He was the youngest person nominated for an Academy Award in any category until 8-year-old Justin Henry was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) 48 years later.

This is the first film based on a comic book, comic strip, or graphic novel to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. However, it lost the award to Cimarron (1931).

The $3 for the dog license would equate to about $47 in 2018.

After Jackie Cooper was hired for the part, he and his mother read numerous stories and clips of the comic strip character and other long-running features to help him get to know and act the correct character personality. He thought the costume he needed to wear was rather silly, but understood that it was a basic feature that couldn't be changed.