Howard Hawks's take on his being "fired" is that he wasn't. Rather, he quit, after refusing to agree with Samuel Goldwyn, who wanted the narrative to stay closer to that of the book. Goldwyn had been ill and absent for the 42 days of shooting that Hawks directed and was unaware of Hawks' rewrites. Hawks left the production with only 14 days left to go.
Howard Hawks stated that William Wyler's contribution was only ten minutes of screen time. However, it's generally thought that Wyler directed the last 30 minutes of the film.
Walter Brennan won the very first Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role as "Swan Bostrom", the category having been introduced in 1937. In the span of four years (1937-41), Brennan won a then-unprecedented three Oscars for acting, subsequently for Kentucky (1938) and The Westerner (1940) - a feat unmatched until Katharine Hepburn won her third Best Actress award in 1969 for The Lion in Winter (1968). Brennan's success at the Academy Awards was seen as largely due in part to the fact that the Screen Extras Guild consistently voted for him, as Brennan had been an extra for many years until his breakout success as one of Hollywood's most respected character actors.
The world premiere was at the Liberty Theatre in Seattle, Washington, where Frances Farmer once worked as an usherette.
This was the most widely seen film of Frances Farmer's brief career, and her vocal on the song "Aura Lea" was considered so memorable that, more than 20 years later, she was asked to perform it live on a 1957 episode of The Ed Sullivan Show.