 Dressler and Beery were MGM's most popular screen team at that time, having recently made the bittersweet "Min and Bill" (1930) together, for which Dressler won the Academy Award for Best Actress.The boisterous Tugboat Annie character first appeared in a series of stories in the "Saturday Evening Post" written by the author Norman Reilly Raine which were supposedly based on the life of Thea Foss of Tacoma, Washington.There is also a theory that her character is loosely based on Kate A. Sutton, secretary and dispatcher for the Providence Steamboat Company during the 1920s.