Fools for Scandal was an enormous box-office failure. Although Carole Lombard considered The Gay Bride her worst film, many contemporary fans give Fools for Scandal that distinction. Lombard lacked chemistry with Gravet, and audiences, who had already begun tiring of screwball comedies, noted a similarity between the plots of Fools for Scandal and Lombard's previous screwball film My Man Godfrey. The film was such a box office failure it prompted Carole Lombard to pursue dramatic parts for the next few years until she did Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941).
According to production files at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the masks worn at the costume party cost $100 each. That amount equates to over $1,800 in 2020.
Warner Brothers borrowed Carole Lombard's favorite cinematographer Ted Tetzlaff from her "home" studio of Paramount for this film, so that she would be comfortable about how she was being photographed.
Of the songs written for this film by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, only one would be sung on screen, "There's a Boy in Harlem," vocalized by Jeni Le Gon and The Three Brown Sisters, accompanied by Les Hite and His Orchestra. "Food for Scandal" (the working title of this feature) served as rhyming patter between Carole Lombard and Fernand Gravey (plus some whistling done by Mr. Gravey alone). Heard in the picture as background music, "How Can You Forget?" was revived in 1958, complete with a Benny Goodman arrangement, for a Broadway play, "The World of Suzie Wong." Three tunes submitted by Rodgers and Hart for the feature were discarded: "Let's Sing About Nothing," "Love Knows Best" and "Once I Was Young." According to Richard Rodgers in "Musical Stages: An Autobiography," published in 1975, the songwriters became aware of the fate of their score when they went to see the picture.
Warner Bros. originally planned to shoot this movie in Technicolor.