Preston Sturges suggested "Great Love" as a title for the film. The script, which blends a number of genres, proved difficult to write, and Sturges joked that it caused him "... to commit hara-kiri several times." As with all of Sturges' scripts, "Remember the Night" included a number of elements from his own life, including the falling-in-love-on-a-journey motif, inspired by his experience with Eleanor Post Hutton on the road to Palm Beach many years before, and the character of Jack's tough but loving Midwestern mother, based on the mother of his third wife Louise Sargent, from whom the lead character's name derived.