A few weeks after the last shot in the film of the barracks at Fort Chaffee was taken, those barracks burned down.
The working title for the film was An Open Heart and Open Arms; a reference to what Carter said when he heard the Cubans were coming ("We'll welcome them with an open heart and open arms.") By popular vote, the title Return to Sender won out. Return to Sender refers to many Arkansans' later position on what to do with the Cubans.
The first draft of the narration was lost when the writer's computer crashed. All but the first two paragraphs had to be rewritten.
Ian Beard, a historian at the Old State House Museum, got the filmmakers interested in this story. He had heard a story from Harold Trisler in Fort Smith that was very intriguing. Trisler had once been woken up in the middle of the night by a call from a woman screaming, "There's a naked Cuban in my tree!" The DoubleTroublets eventually interviewed him, but unfortunately couldn't fit this story into the film.