In the end, Johnny brings the cows and marries Mahana that night, enduring some mocking for paying so much for a seemingly undesirable wife while Moki revels in his newfound prosperity.

The film was based on the 1965 short story, "Johnny Lingo and the Eight-Cow Wife", written by author Patricia McGerr and published in Woman's Day magazine.

[5] The story has been frequently reprinted, including in The Australian Women's Weekly,[6] The Instructor,[7] and Reader's Digest,[8] as well as by assorted books and websites (sometimes condensed or attributed to other authors).

[9] In the short story, told from the perspective of a visitor to the fictional Pacific islands of "Kiniwata" and "Nurabandi" while on leave from assignment in Japan, the character of Mahana is instead named "Sarita", while her father is referred to as "Sam Karoo.

[12] In the summer of 2001, the Salt Lake Acting Company staged a live parody performance of Johnny Lingo as that year's episode of their annual theatrical spoof series Saturday's Voyeur.

A 2003 remake of this film called The Legend of Johnny Lingo was directed by Steven Ramirez and financed by the Utah-based Tahitian Noni International.

The film has been criticized for "[hinging] on the idea that a woman’s self-esteem is based on the price she commands in a financial transaction between men, not on any internal sense of who she is.