Trivia

Feature film debut of Natalie Wood. She is the girl with the ice cream cone. Wood's family lived in Santa Rosa, California at the time, one of the locations for this film.

Cara Williams and Harry Morgan both had supporting roles as friends of Rusty but never shared screen time. Both would go on 17 years later as the leads in Pete and Gladys (1960) for 2 seasons.

"Lux Radio Theater" broadcast a 60 minute radio adaptation of the movie on April 10, 1944 with Don Ameche and Frances Dee reprising their film roles.

Many of the adult actors lived well beyond normal life expectancy for those of their generation. Of the main characters, Frances Dee and Ann Rutherford lived the longest, both passing away at age 94. Dee passed away in 2004 and Rutherford in 2012, while Don Ameche passed away at age 85 in 1993. Richard Crane was not as long lived, passing away at age 50 in 1969. In a parallel to the film, both screen parents outlived the actor that played their son.

Of the other main credited adult supporting actors, Cara Williams born in 1925 is still alive at age 91 as of 2017, Adeline De Walt Reynolds lived to age 98, passing away in 1961, and Harry Morgan, lived to age 96, passing away in 2011.

20th Century-Fox paid MacKinlay Kantor $25,000 for the rights to his novel, which appeared in the 28 November 1942 edition of The Saturday Evening Post, and the August 1943 edition of Reader's Digest in abridged form.