Trivia

Mickey Rooney had just turned 11 years old when he played Walter Huston's young son in his first full-length sound feature film. His character's name is also "Mickey," and his first line is, "Say, those don't look like pancakes!"

(at around 52 mins) Daisy (Jean Harlow) has a party at her place. On a small table against the back wall is a photo of Clark Gable, soon to be her co-star in Red Dust (1932) later the same year. Also prominently displayed is the less well recognized Lynn Fontanne, who had recently completed her work in MGM's The Guardsman (1931); another picture was of Helen Chandler, who had just appeared opposite Ramon Novarro in MGM's Daybreak (1931).

The film originated from a conversation between President Herbert Hoover and MGM head Louis B. Mayer. Hoover thought the public needed to have greater respect for the police and law enforcement, in light of all the "gangster" pictures coming out at the time seemingly glorifying them. In fact, Hoover gave a blurb for use in ads for the film, which promoted it as "A Great Drama Inspired by Our President."

Though the city is not named, background shots and establishing shots indicate it might be modeled after New York, (Broadway, Brooklyn Bridge) but in the first shot at the Police HQ, one of the detectives is clearly reading a "Los Angeles Examiner" comic section. The car chase scenes are also clearly in L.A.

One cop tells another cop that a woman he stopped offered to buy six tickets to the Policeman's Ball, which was a fundraiser for charities that support disabled cops and families of fallen cops. It was understood to be a sort of bribe to avoid a traffic ticket. Modern charities, like the 100 Club and Fraternal Order of Police, serve the same purpose, and motorists display those stickers on their cars to verify to cops that they've made such a donation.