Franchot Tone portrayed cowboy Curly; June Walker was seen as his sweetheart Laurey.

Theatre Guild board member Helen Westley, who had appeared as Mrs. Muskat in the original Broadway production of Ferenc Molnár's Liliom, played Aunt Eller.

Lee Strasberg, later to become a teacher of method acting, played the part of the Syrian peddler.

It uses newly composed songs in place of the traditional folk songs in Riggs' work, but the plot is largely similar, though the endings are different: unlike the musical, the end of Green Grow the Lilacs is left rather undecided as to Curly's trial for accidentally killing farmhand Jeeter (renamed Jud Fry in the musical).

[3] In addition, the cowboy Will Parker is only referred to in the Riggs play and does not actually appear in it; the entire comic subplot involving the fifty dollars that Will must obtain in order to be able to marry Ado Annie is an invention of Hammerstein's.