For Ladd, Saigon was one of a series of adventure films set in foreign locales, starting with Two Years Before the Mast (1946) and Calcutta (1947).

[4]World War II has ended and Major Larry Briggs finds out that his friend Captain Mike Perry has only two months to live due to a head injury.

Sailing to Saigon on a boat, Larry tricks Keon by stowing the money away into an envelope he mails to himself, and throws all suspicion off Susan.

In October 1945 it was announced Paramount would make a film called Saigon about the relationship between a British officer and American woman during the Japanese occupation of Indo-China.

Later, the studio decided to use the title for a new story, set in post-World War II Indo-China and starring Alan Ladd, who had previously appeared in exotic adventure tales such as China and (the then still unreleased) Calcutta.

In September 1946 it was announced Ladd would star, PJ Wolfson would produce and James Henagan and John Leman were writing the script.

[9] It was meant to start that month but shooting was pushed back when Wild Harvest (1947), starring Ladd, took an extra 10 days to film.

For the movie, Veronica Lake reverted to her famous "peek-a-boo bob" hairstyle, which she had abandoned during the war at the request of the government because female factory workers kept getting their hair caught in machinery while imitating it.

"[16] In a similar vein, Bosley Crowther simply dismissed the film as "sorry" and "a fine lot of super-silly moonshine, more to be laughed at than esteemed.