With Bette Davis rising quickly through the ranks at Warner Brothers, she was able to choose her leading men, and for That Certain Woman (1937) she chose Henry Fonda. Their lives had intersected a decade earlier when they worked in the same New England summer stock company. Even before that portion of their lives, they had met when Fonda gave the 17-year-old Davis a tour of Princeton University. One night, Fonda later wrote, while he and a friend took Davis and her sister out for a tour of the campus by moonlight, he nervously gave Davis an innocent kiss on the lips. A few days later he received a letter from her: "I've told mother about our lovely experience together in the moonlight. She will announce the engagement when we get home." Fonda was so naïve that he wasn't sure at first whether this was a joke! Davis remembered and liked Fonda enough to request him for this film and then again for Jezebel (1938).
The film was based on Edmund Goulding's earlier script for The Trespasser (1929), starring Gloria Swanson, which he also directed.
Bette Davis reflected her experience while filming this movie as such: "[It] was certainly not one of my favorite scripts. There was a falseness to the whole project. But I did meet and work with Edmund Goulding for the first time. He concentrated on attractive shots of me --- in other words, gave me the star treatment. It was the first time I had this. I was always a member of the cast --- a leading member --- but not made special in the way Goulding made me special in this film."
According to Warner Bros. records, Constance Bennett was interested in playing Mary, and John Barrymore and John Litel were tested as Rogers. Litel was later cast as "Clark Tilden" but was replaced by Minor Watson.
The $500,000 left to Mary in 1937 would be worth $1,131,496 in 2025.