This film was not successful at the box office and made Jack L. Warner rethink putting Errol Flynn in non-adventure pictures. Flynn, worried about being typecast, lobbied Warner to do other films - screwball comedies in particular.
The fourth of nine movies made together by Warner Brothers' romantic couple Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn.
Supposedly based on the career of Ivy Ledbetter Lee (1877-1934), often called "the father of public relations", who worked for the Rockefeller family.
Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Patric Knowles, and Melville Cooper worked together in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) which was also directed by Michael Curtiz.
This film presents one of the largest and most elaborate model train sets ever seen in a motion picture. In the race, Bob's locomotive is a Lionel Union Pacific M-10000 "Streamliner" (model #752E), and Dillingwell's is a Lionel New York Central "Hudson" (model #700E).