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.
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.
Billie Burke never really rated the film much despite taking a personal interest in the writing of the script. She went to great lengths to make sure that writer William Anthony McGuire never besmirched the good name of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., hence the playing down of his infidelities.