"The Screen Guild Theater" broadcast a 30 minute radio adaptation of the movie on November 3, 1947 with Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo reprising their film roles.
June Haver was originally cast in a role.
Henry Corden's first project.
Author James Thurber acknowledged that the character Walter Mitty was based on his friend, writer Robert Benchley. Thurber said that he got the idea for Mitty from the character created by Benchley in a series of shorts that he made for Fox and MGM, respectively, in the 1920s and 1930s. Thurber is also on record as saying that he hated this film and that Danny Kaye's interpretation of Mitty is nothing at all like he intended the character to be.
Danny Kaye's wife, Sylvia Fine, wrote the lyrics to a song in which Walter Mitty fantasizes that he is the homosexual women's hat designer Anatole of Paris, whose show he stumbles upon while escaping from villains in Stacey's Department Store. She was a musical-theater buff and introduced a reference to the song "Ol' Man River" (from Show Boat) into the lyrics of the song "Anatole of Paris" and satirical references to "Show Boat" in one of Mitty's daydreams.
Filmed early April-August 21 1946, released nearly a year later.
In an unused Mitty dream sequence, Boris Karloff appears as the Frankenstein monster, which explains Mitty's fear of Karloff's character. Test photos of Karloff in makeup (by Jack P. Pierce) exist, as well as a letter from Universal Pictures to Goldwyn Pictures giving permission to use the makeup design.