Writer Lewis E. Lawes was still warden of Sing Sing prison during filming and allowed the crew to film inside and outside the prison, including mob scenes.
James Cagney was originally set for the male lead but was engaged in a contract dispute with Warner Brothers at the time.
Although the film never received any awards, it received overwhelmingly positive reviews from film critics and audiences alike.
Studio production chief Hal B. Wallis felt strongly about the issue of prison reform and returned to champion it again and again in such movies as Front Page Woman (1935), The Walking Dead (1936) and Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)--often assigning Michael Curtiz to direct--as well as this film's remake, Castle on the Hudson (1940).
This marks the only time Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis would ever appear together in a movie though Davis would state in the Whitney Stine's biography, Mother Goddam, "One of my great dreams in later years was that we could find a really great script to do together. Spencer and I were both born on April 5. What a marvelous actor he was."