The child who portrayed Tony in the movie was a 4-year-old named Pat Barker. It was only when Pat came to Fort Worth to celebrate the movie's premiere that the world discovered Pat was really Patricia.
Edna Gladney placed more than 10,000 babies with adoptive parents during her career and totally revolutionized adoption practices, helping to grant adoptive children the same rights as natural children and giving orphans and birth mothers a place to stay and a hospital where they could receive treatment. She helped develop modern day adoption practices and removed the stigma of illegitimacy from birth records and from society. She treated all of her children as if they were her own and continued correspondence with adopted children long after they had left her care.
The first of five consecutive Best Actress Oscar nominations for Greer Garson; she would win the following year for Mrs. Miniver (1942).
Theresa Harris, who plays Cleo, is clearly wearing a pronounced coat of 'blackface' over her own skin color, as it was felt that Harris' natural tone photographed as too light. This was likely due to the influence of "Gone with the Wind" (1939), filmed only two years previously and the only film up to that time that featured a significant amount of African American actors photographed in Technicolor, all particularly dark-skinned. With color photography just beginning to gain a level of polish and sophistication, there were precious few films to use as research, and the black cast members featured in "Gone with the Wind" served as a template for the makers of this film.