Debbie Reynolds and Thelma Ritter also co-starred, a year later, in How the West Was Won (1962). Ritter's character is named Aggie/Agatha in both movies.
Eleanor Audley, the elegant older woman who leads the town-folk in pleading with Reynolds to run for sheriff, was one of Hollywood's busiest and best known character actresses. She was also known for doing voices for animated Disney movies. You may remember her as both the wicked stepmother in Cinderella (1950) and the evil sorceress Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty (1959).
Blossom Rock, the actress playing Andy Griffith's smothering mother here, would later achieve TV immortality as the irascible Grandma in ABC's hit 1964 sitcom The Addams Family (1964).
Major elements of this film's plot were "borrowed" for the 1967 comedy western The Ballad of Josie (1967), which starred Doris Day, playing a widowed mother trying to make it on her own in the old West, not unlike Reynolds does here.
Lucretia Rogers (Debbie Reynolds) is told the job of sheriff pays $150.00 per month, plus free room and board. The $150.00 in 1912 would be worth $4,780.00 by the year 2024.
