Shirley Temple's first Technicolor film.
In the scene where a parrot flies into Sara's room off of Ram Daz's (Cesar Romero) shoulder, originally a small monkey was to be used. However, the monkey did not seem to like Shirley Temple and kept trying to bite her. So for safety sake, they used a Macaw parrot instead.
Sara's black dress was bought new and aged for the film.
The full name of the book this movie is based on is "A Little Princess, Being the Whole Story of Sara Crewe Here Told For the First Time" by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
The original source of the movie was a novel called "Sara Crewe; or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's" by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and it was published in 1888. She later adapted her book for the stage calling it "A Little Princess" (in London, 1902) and "The Little Princess" (in New York, 1903). It was successful enough that her publisher, C. Scribner's Sons, requested that she expand her original novel to include scenes from the play. The result was the final novel, "A Little Princess; being the whole story of Sara Crewe," which was published in 1905, and is the secondary source for the movie.