This film failed at the box office, resulting in a loss to MGM of $664,000 according to studio records.
MGM paid Preston Sturges $60,000 for the rights to his play. He was disappointed that the studio did not involve him in this remake of the 1931 film of his play - for which Universal paid him $125,000 for the rights. The sexual innuendo of the play and its first pre-code film production is missing from this picture.
Greta Garbo, John Gilbert and Lewis Stone among others, appear in archival footage from the MGM silent film A Woman of Affairs (1928). Stone played the part of "Judge Dempsey" in the early version of Strictly Dishonorable (1931).
An opera sequence performed early in the film, an aria in the opera Il ritorno di Césare, was actually a fictitious opera written especially for the film by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.