Frances Dee and Joan Blondell were considered for the female lead before Claire Trevor was chosen.
Universal Pictures production number 1000.
Actor Arthur Q. Bryan, best known as the voice of "Elmer Fudd" in Warner Bros. cartoons, plays his scene in this movie in his Elmer Fudd voice, even though there is no real reason for his character to talk that way.
Loosely based on the life story of bank robber/US mail thief and prison escape artist Roy Gardner, who eventually was sentenced to Alcatraz. He wrote a book about it called Hellcatraz in 1939.