The forty-foot dive was actually smaller; to ensure the safety of the horses, they could not dive more than ten feet. The dive was made larger through visual trickery.
Last acting work of Michael Schoeffling, who quit the film business in the early 1990's to concentrate in his own selling furniture business.
Quoted from the American Film Institute: "Sonora Carver was quoted in an 11 Jun 1991 article from the Santa Barbara News Press, saying she 'resented' the inclusion of a scene in which her late husband is inaccurately portrayed attempting to strike his father."
Quoted from the American Film Institute: "Production designer Randy Ser had only two weeks to build a diving tower and a water tank that could be transported from the horse training facility in Newhall, CA, to filming locations in South Carolina. After considerable research, Ser found a manufacturer that constructed its water tanks with bolts rather than welding. He ordered a tank measuring forty feet in diameter and ten feet deep, with a capacity of 88,750 gallons. The tank was built to withstand the water displacement created by a horse and rider with the combined weight of 1,000 pounds. Ser also designed a diving tower that could withstand the sixty-mile-per-hour winds common during hurricane season on the Atlantic coast."
Writer Oley Sassone met the real Sonora Webster Carver sometime in the late-1980s, and wanted to make a thirty-minute documentary about her career as a diving girl in the Great Depression. Sassone then contacted producer Matt Williams about the idea. Williams then suggested it would make a great feature-length film.