Standard Oil of New Jersey contributed $258,000 to the film's production. Although the company had no rights and no identification in the film, it stood "to get across the idea that oil companies are beneficently public-spirited, their employees honest, industrious and amiable, and their operations productive and innocuous." According to a modern source, Robert J. Flaherty's contract with Standard Oil insured that all of the film's profits went to him.
After a screen test had been shot of Joseph Boudreaux, but before he had been chosen for the role of The Boy, his uncle gave him a "G.I." --- i.e., very short --- haircut. The production had to delay shooting until his hair grew back.
The score for this film, by Virgil Thomson, marks the only occasion that film music has won the Pulitzer Prize for Best Composition.
Photographed with new, lighter 35mm cameras used by Nazi propagandists during the war years.
In 1952, the movie was also ranked #5 in the top 10 of the first British Film Institute's Sight and Sound poll of the 10 Greatest Films of All-Time.