According to soundman Edward Bernds: "Allan Dwan started the picture and worked about a week or ten days on it... Dwan made even Walter Huston look bad, and we wondered how long it would take Cohn and Briskin to wake up to the fact. When [Capra] took the picture over, threw out everything that had been shot before, and started over again, I fully realized, for the first time, what directing really was. Scenes that had been dull became lively, performances that had been dead came alive."
Allan Dwan, who started the picture but was replaced by Capra, later made "The Inside Story" for Republic in 1948, a movie that had a similar outlook and message as "American Madness."
Walter Huston (on loan from MGM) worked 4 weeks and 6 days on this production. Louis B. Mayer exercised a provision in his 1931 contract extending it for his participation in this film.
Duncan Knowles, a former Bank of America historian states, "Frank Capra definitely told us, and the entire National Italian American Association, that when he made the move American Madness, he based the banker character on A. P. Giannini, that is fact." Giannini was the founder of the Bank of America.
The film was originally entitled "Bank Story" and was intended to quell American discontent over the alleged misbehavior of banks during the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Both bankers and censors claimed the film did more to improve the image of banks than a thousand newspaper articles.