In the long dolly shot of Joel McCrea and Mary Astor strolling on the pier from Rudy Vallee's yacht, Preston Sturges makes a rare Alfred Hitchcock-style appearance as the chubby, moustachioed leader of the crew toting Claudette Colbert's luggage.
Was to be Carole Lombard's role after she completed Tutti baciarono la sposa (1942) but her death in a plane crash had her replaced by Claudette Colbert in this film and Joan Crawford in the other.
Preston Sturges's perfectionism slowed down production. He refused to move on to close-ups until he had a perfect master shot, and he would stop and do a new take if an actor changed a word of the script. William Demarest, who appeared in eight Sturges films, would later say, "He had a great memory. If you changed anything, he'd say, 'Wait a minute,' and, goddamn, he was right."
The original title of this film was 'Is Marriage Necessary?,' but this was deemed to contravene the Production Code.
One thing slowing the film down was Preston Sturges's problems with Mary Astor. Although she was an accomplished screen actress, the Sturges brand of comedy did not come naturally to her. She would later write, "It was not my thing. I couldn't talk in a high fluty voice and run my words together as he thought high society women did, or at least mad high society women who'd had six husbands and six million dollars."