A.A. Trimble, who portrays Will Rogers in the film, was a Cleveland map salesman who frequently impersonated Rogers at Rotarian lunches.
The sequence "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody" was filmed in two lengthy takes after several weeks of rehearsals and filming (a definite cut is made when moving to a close-up on the singer dressed as Pagliacci, presumably to effect a change of camera position, necessary to start the inexorable move up the huge staircase). It features 180 performers and cost $220,000; 4,300 yards of rayon silk were used for the curtains in the scene.
Myrna Loy, who received second billing for this film, does not appear on screen until 2 hours and 15 minutes into the movie.
Eugen Sandow is portrayed as a typically "dumb strongman". In real life, however, Sandow was highly intelligent and a superb businessman. Because he was among the first men to display his muscular body as a "work of art", he was considered "The Father of Bodybuilding", and this is what his gravestone reads. Among his friends were Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas A. Edison (who filmed him at the Black Maria Studios), and even King Edward VII. Sandow's career became bigger than ever after his association with Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.. He became very wealthy and famous because of his mail-order businesses, gyms, souvenir photographs, books, and personal appearances. There is a mountain in Alaska, a railroad, and a small town in Texas (near Austin) named after him. Unfortunately, the town no longer exists per the Texas Historical Society--the Alcoa Aluminum factory near Rockdale is named after the town, as it sits where the town once was.
Pat Nixon (then Patricia Ryan), the future wife of Richard Nixon and the First Lady of the United States from 1969 to 1974, makes an uncredited appearance as a Ziegfeld girl.