The working title of this film was Three Time Loser. This was Walter Wanger's first film for United Artists. According to a FD news item dated 1 Jul 1936, Spencer Tracy was originally scheduled to play a leading role along with Sylvia Sidney and Henry Fonda. NYT articles on the production stated that director Fritz Lang, who worked with writers Gene Towne and Graham Baker for four weeks on the script, "tried to get into it what he called social implications that were ultimately overruled, showing how the boy drifted into crime because of bad influences and unfortunate environment--instead the picture opens as the boy emerges from the prison, a stranger to the audience." According to NYT, once the script was the way he wanted it, Lang refused to allow the writers to alter it further. Correspondence in the Fritz Lang Papers at the AFI Library, including a letter from Towne to Lang, makes reference to a particular incident of conflict that occurred one night on the set. Towne, in a conciliatory tone, states in the letter that he realizes he and Lang are both "striving for perfection." In Sep 1936, FD reported that Towne and Baker traveled to San Francisco to gather background material, presumably having to do with the prison scenes.
       In an article dated 8 Nov 1936, during the production period, NYT noted that Wanger "is permitting [Lang] to do just as he pleases and assures him that no other hands will touch [the film] through the editing, a condition that did not exist for Lang at Metro." (Lang's previous film Fury was produced by M-G-M [see entry].) The article also pointed out that Lang "directs the setting up of the camera instead of leaving it largely to the photographer. Thus far the camera has not rested once on a stationary tripod, always being mounted on a crane, and when the characters aren't moving, the lens is." In a HR article during production, columnist W. R. Wilkerson, after seeing four uncut reels, stated, "We have never seen anything so beautiful or so effective." According to a HR news item, Wanger rented space at Educational to house a portion of the prison set which overflowed from the United Artists lot across the street. HR also states that the song "A Thousand Dreams of You," by Louis Alter and Paul Webster, was purchased for this film and that Henry Fonda recorded the song on 6 Nov 1936. Fonda's singing does not appear in the print viewed, but it is possible that the music from the song is included in the soundtrack. Actor Charles "Chic" Sale died on 7 Nov 1936 from lobar pneumonia. According to Var, he "gained world-wide fame by his delineation of rube character roles in vaudeville for many years, and more recently in pictures." A cast list in the Fritz Lang Papers at the USC Cinema-Television Library and Archive of the Performing Arts, gives the following credits for roles that were not in the print viewed: John Beck, Harry Bernard, Dorothea Wolbert (People in post office), Walter Soderling (Man in teller's cage), Frank Hammond (Lounger in store), Russ Powell (Sheriff in store). It is not known whether scenes with these actors were cut from the film, deleted from the print viewed, or not shot at all. According to the Lang Papers at AFI, the final cost of the film was $575,000, initial shooting took forty-four days, and a day each was needed for retakes, added scenes and inserts.
       According to information in the MPAA/PCA Collection at the AMPAS Library, after the script was received by the PCA on 17 Aug 1936, PCA director Joseph Breen objected to the bank robbery scene, which, he noted, "will have to be very materially changed. The censor boards will not allow it. It likewise violates our Code, suggestively, at least, because of excessive brutality and gruesomeness." Specifically, Breen listed a litany of shots that were objectionable: "no flash of a man's face contorted with agony, no showing of a woman lying on the sidewalk, no hurling of bombs, no cop lying on the street, his face contorted in pain; no truck crushing out the life of a cop, no terrible screaming, no shots of bodies lying around, no figure of a little girl huddled in death, no shrieks." Breen also noted the similarity between the plot of this film and that of both We Who Are About to Die (see entry) and The Turning Point (which was released as The Accusing Finger [see entry]) in terms of circumstantial evidence convicting a criminal and the sympathetic treatment of a Catholic priest. PCA information states that the print they received on 31 Dec 1936 was ten reels in length and 8,099 feet; however, retakes, additional scenes and inserts were shot in Jan 1937, and the footage of the final film has not been determined.
       According to a telegram in the Lang Papers at AFI dated 26 Jan 1937, Wanger suggested to Lang, who had gone to New York to help with the opening there, that he assist the United Artists official in charge of dealing with the censor boards because certain censors were attempting to make cuts in the film. Lang himself cut the bank robbery scene for the state of Ohio censor board at the request of United Artists, but told them that Wanger was the one to decide if the film should be cut. Wanger later informed Lang that Ohio put the bank robbery scene back in. The Lang Papers at AFI contain a telegram in which David O. Selznick, praising the film, stated, "I think it one of the greatest directorial jobs I have ever seen." While reviews also gave the film high praise, Wanger, in a letter to Lang dated 8 Mar 1937, remarked, "I am afraid that the general reaction is that our picture is a little heavy for what they call 'entertainment' in this country." The story of this film was serialized in the Evening News beginning 1 Feb 1937. Extensive footage from the armored truck robbery was used in the 1945 Monogram production of Dillinger. That film contains some footage of the robbery not included in the print viewed of You Only Live Once and also shots from the earlier film of the armored truck being pulled out of the swamp and a long shot of the prison.