The United Artists release includes most of the sequences familiar to readers of the book, including the fence-whitewashing episode; Tom and Huckleberry Finn's attendance at their own funeral, after the boys, who were enjoying an adventure on a remote island, are presumed dead; the murder trial of local drunkard Muff Potter; and Tom and Becky Thatcher's flight through a cave as they try to escape Injun Joe, who is revealed to be the real killer.

Tommy Kelly, a Bronx fireman's son, was selected for the title role through a national campaign waged by producer David O. Selznick, who later would conduct a similar search for an actress to portray Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind.

[6] After reading the comment cards completed by an audience at a sneak preview of the film, Selznick sent director Taurog a memo expressing concern about the climactic scene in the cave, which many viewers had described as "too horrible for children."

He advised Taurog "this worried me, because we certainly want the picture to be for a family audience," and as a result he was cutting a close-up of Becky, in which her hysteria was "perhaps a shade too much that of a very ill woman, rather than that of a little girl," "with regrets.

Other scenes were filmed on recycled sets left over from A Star is Born (1937), such as the Blodgett family home interior (kitchen, living room, and bedroom), and a silhouette of a wolf howling at the Moon.

"[9] Variety wrote that Selznick had "pulled no financial punches" in mounting the production and that while the film was generally faithful to the book, an "excellent job" had been done on the new dialogue written for the screen.