When the mule chases James Gleason, not a stuntman, is knocked down by the animal, a scene which wasn't planned, as Norma Shearer's reaction attests.
When the final version of the movie went before Hollywood censors, they demanded that MGM cut the scene where Norma Shearer lays on the bed and suggestively asks Clark Gable to put his arms around her. The studio ignored the demand and released the film uncut.
Lionel Barrymore often is cited incorrectly as delivering a fourteen-minute monologue during the climactic courtroom scene. In fact, while the scene itself lasts fourteen minutes and was shot in one take using six cameras, Barrymore's monologue lasts approximately two and a half minutes.
The characters of Jan and Stephen Ashe were based on writer Adela Rogers St. Johns and her father, famed Los Angeles defense attorney Earl Rogers. Crime novelist Erle Stanley Gardner also used Earl Rogers as the basis for his most famous character, Los Angeles defense attorney Perry Mason.
The censors objected to numerous elements in the film's plot including premarital sex, alcoholism, murder, gambling, and threats of kidnapping. However, after increased enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code in 1934, censor Joseph Breen prevented the film from being re-released after 1936.