Lester Cowan had previously tried to make this movie in the 1940s, with Cary Grant and Shirley Temple as father and daughter. He originally planned to co-produce with his partner Mary Pickford.
One of a handful of MGM productions of the early 1950s whose original copyrights were never renewed, and are now in the public domain. For this reason, this title is now offered, often in very inferior copies, at bargain prices, by numerous VHS and DVD distributors, who do not normally handle copyrighted or MGM material.
Sandy Descher, seen here as Van Johnson's precocious, ballet-dancing daughter, is best remembered for one of her other roles: She played the little girl found wandering in the desert who spoke the immortal line "Them!" at the beginning of the science-fiction classic about giant ants, Them! (1954).
Because of an error with the Roman numerals in the copyright notice on the prints, this movie was legally copyrighted in 1944, not 1954. The copyright was not renewed by MGM as it expired ten years earlier than the copyright office records indicated (in eighteen years versus twenty-eight years). At this time it was the copyright notice and date on the film prints that counted legally, so this movie entered the public domain in 1972.