Goldie Hawn's film debut. Not only was it Hawn's first movie, but the movie set where she first met future longtime partner Kurt Russell. In a 2012 interview Hawn said, "I was 21 and he was 16 and I thought he was adorable, but he was much too young. And then years later we met up again and I liked him, and I remembered that I liked him very much when I first met him." Hawn and Russell reconnected around 17 years later at Russell's audition for the film Swing Shift.
According to a 1968 interview with Robert B. Sherman, the film was originally intended to be 156 minutes, but the studio cut the film to 110 minutes after Radio City Music Hall requested it. The cuts consisted of two songs and a good deal of character motivation. The same fate befell two of the Sherman Brothers' other "Disney" live-action musicals, "The Happiest Millionaire (1967)" and "Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)." Sherman said he felt the studio "acted like horses' asses" over the running time.
The song "Ten Feet off the Ground" was one of two songs from the film sung and released by Louis Armstrong in 1968.
This was originally planned as a two-part movie for the Disney television show, for which the Sherman Brothers were to contribute two songs. When it was proposed that the story be expanded into a feature theatrical film musical, nine additional songs were written, with Robert Sherman reportedly doing so under protest, feeling that it was a lot of unnecessary padding, to what was basically a simple story. He may have been correct, as the film turned out to be a critical and financial failure.
According to the DVD commentary, Lesley Ann Warren made the mistake of having her hair cut short (a la 'Twiggy') by her future husband Jon Peters during filming.