The Fighting Kentuckian

John Wayne was so pleased with the chemistry between him and Oliver Hardy that he offered Hardy the role of "permanent comic sidekick" in subsequent movies. By the time this picture was released, Stan Laurel had recovered from his illness and was able to return to the Laurel & Hardy team so Hardy declined Wayne's offer.

Although Oliver Hardy was a good friend of John Wayne's, he initially balked at acting in this movie, for fear that it would make people think that he and Stan Laurel had broken up as a team. When Laurel insisted that Hardy take the role, he acquiesced.

During the 23-year period when Oliver Hardy made comedies with Stan Laurel, this was one of only two movies in which he acted without his famous comedy partner.

John Wayne later blamed the poor critical response to the movie on co-star Vera Ralston. He said, "Yates [Republic Pictures studio chief Herbert J. Yates] made me use Vera Hruba [Republic star Vera Ralston, who was also Yates' mistress] . . . I've always been mad at Yates about this, because we lost the chance to have one damn fine movie."

John Wayne had worked with Oliver Hardy on a charity tour of the play "What Price Glory?" and thought he would be perfect as the food loving Kentuckian but Ollie refused as he didn't want people to think that he and Stan Laurel were splitting up. When he mentioned it to Stan, who was struggling with diabetes, Stan said just because he couldn't work there was no reason why Ollie shouldn't. John thought Ollie more than made up for the handicap of having Vera Ralston in the cast, and said to Paul Fix 'Nobody's going to remember Vera in our film because all they're gonna remember is Oliver Hardy and me doing our comedy scenes'