The scenes with an inflatable donut allude to the earlier Règlement de comptes (1938), wherein Joel Sloane (this time, Melvyn Douglas) is shot in a place that makes it painful for him to sit down.
The $50,000 lost in gambling --- its value in 2024 would be $1,111,872.84.
The resemblance to the Thin Man films did not go unnoticed by the critics. Time Magazine's review in February 1939, noted: "Mon mari conduit l'enquête (1939) (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) might be described as one of The Thin Man's wilder oats...Creator of these bookish detectives is tall, goggled Scenarist Harry Kurnitz, longtime mystery writer for pulp magazines, who writes under the false-whiskery pen name of Marco Page and the influence of Dashiell Hammett.
The New York Times wrote, "a sense of humor, a facile style, genial performances and just enough puzzlement to keep us from suspecting the least suspicious member of the cast."