Richard M. Sherman had reservations about whether Fred MacMurray was right for the part of Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, but Walt Disney overruled him.
The phone booth from the film is now at Disneyland Park's Club 33 and is fully functional. Guests can make calls free of charge. The club also boasts a grandmother clock from the film atop which the beloved Alfred animatronic sits.
The last live-action film that Walt Disney worked on. At the time of his death, the crew had completed principal photography, but post-production had not begun. It was with this film that the studio's trend of subjecting its live-action musicals to wholesale cuts began. Radio City Music Hall, the site of the film's New York premiere, had a Disney-themed Christmas stage show and demanded cuts to accommodate it.
During the opening song there's a bit of business showing a man and woman each walking their respective dogs and getting tangled up in the leashes. This is an inside joke reference to an identical moment in the earlier Disney film La carica dei cento e uno (1961).
After the film's initial release, this film went unseen for many years, without a theatrical re-release or even a TV screening on Disneyland (1954), until the 144-minute version was first released on video in the US in 1983.