According to Life Magazine, special effects wizard James Basevi was given a budget of $400,000 to create his effects. He spent $150,000 to build a native village with a lagoon 200 yards long, and then spent $250,000 destroying it.
Doubles were not used for Mary Astor and Dorothy Lamour when they were lashed to a tree during the hurricane. In her autobiography, Astor said that the sand and water whipping their faces sometimes left pinpricks of blood on their cheeks.
John Ford insisted that no actor could possibly recreate the pain of a real flogging. Jon Hall agreed to undergo the real thing, and he submitted to being horsewhipped until his back bled. Unfortunately, his quest for verisimilitude went unnoticed as the censors found the sequence to be far too realistic and insisted that it be cut.
Samuel Goldwyn originally intended contract player Joel McCrea to be in the leading role, but he balked at playing the role as he believed he would be unconvincing as a Polynesian. The problem was solved when Goldwyn became convinced that McCrea was right and traded his services to Paramount in exchange for Dorothy Lamour.
The native village set was on 2½ acres of United Artists' back lot.