David Niven was due to join the British Army but was given a 21-day grace period to finish his scenes for the movie. The production crew worked double time and filmed Niven's scenes first to comply with his obligation to start his military service.
This may be the first movie made that shows a television set with a program airing on it. While TV was being developed in Great Britain, Germany and the U.S. in the late 1920s (the first transmission was in 1928 in New York), the Great Depression all but brought it to a stop. In 1936, the BBC began broadcasting from its first station at Victoria Alexandra Palace in the north of London. Germany broadcast the 1936 Summer Olympic games to 28 public television rooms in Berlin and Hamburg. And American TV broadcast Pres. Franklin Roosevelt opening the New York World's Fair in 1939. But, by then, the advent of World War II delayed further development of TV.
At the beginning of the film, a cricket match is seen on television. The BBC had a functioning TV station complete with a program schedule. According to a TV Guide article from the '80s, the BBC, believing that the Germans could track the signal, shut down the TV broadcast right in the middle of a Mickey Mouse cartoon. Six years later, almost to the minute, the BBC resumed broadcasting- right where they left off in 1939.
The movie was to have been filmed in England. The war in Europe caused the studio to change its production plans.