Victor Mature was cast after being spotted in a stage play, To Quito and Back. This film marked his debut in the small role of a gangster called Lefty. He impressed Hal Roach so much that Roach cast Mature in the lead for Tumak, fils de la jungle (1940) where he created a sensation as the beefy caveman hero, beginning a long career as a star.
When the film was re-released in 1946, the name of Victor Mature , who was by then riding the crest of his popularity, was raised from 7th credited position, where it originally was, to co-starring position opposite that of leading lady Joan Bennett, even though he had a decidedly secondary role.
According to her memoir "The Bennett Playbill", Joan Bennett detested one of the tag lines for this film, which was "She couldn't cook, she couldn't sew, but oh, how she could so-and-so!" She fought with producer Hal Roach over the line on the grounds that the lines "implied a vulgarity that simply wasn't there and had nothing to do with the film, which was a bland comedy, and not a very good one at that." He didn't listen, so she wrote to over 2600 women's clubs in the US and asked them to boycott her own film. The resulting publicity took a film that was slumping at the box office and made it into a financial success.
According to an item in the Hollywood Reporter, Hal Roach wanted to borrow Spring Byington from Twentieth Century-Fox for this picture.
Interesting observation: Victor Mature's character "Lefty" uses his right hand predominately, particularly by leaving a bruise on Deakon Maxwell's (Adolph Menjou) left cheek.
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