Barre Lyndon wrote the screenplay based on his novel, which had been successfully serialized in The Saturday Evening Post early in 1941. Although the setting was to be in Kenya and the eastern deserts of Africa, location shooting took place in Hollywood's oft-used Bronson Caverns in Hollywood Hills, California's Mojave Desert, and, at Hathaway's suggestion, the high desert plains in the Shiprock area of New Mexico, site of ancient Pueblo settlements.