The songs "A Woman in Love", "Pet Me Poppa" and "Adelaide" were written for the screen version and were not in the original Broadway show. On Broadway, Nathan Detroit (Frank Sinatra) doesn't sing in the title song. That was added for the film to increase Sinatra's singing part.
The storyline was based on the 1933 Damon Runyon short story, "The Idyll Of Sarah Brown", That story was later a radio play, broadcast on "Damon Runyon Theater", in 1949, on NBC radio. The voice of Sky Masterson, at that time, was Richard Egan, who had just begun his acting career.
This was the only Samuel Goldwyn production to be released through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Very few contractions - 'aren't' for 'are not' or 'wouldn't' for 'would not', for example - are used in the dialogue in this movie (the songs are a different story). While it makes the language seem stilted and excessively formal at times, this is true to the writings of Damon Runyon. He also eschewed the use of contractions, and this characteristic gave his works a very recognizable style.