Barbara Stanwyck had played Bonny King on stage (under her original name, Ruby Stephens) and tested for the film, but Paramount decided to use Nancy Carroll because she, unlike Stanwyck, had already made films and therefore had a movie "name".
This was Oscar Levant's first acting role in a feature film.
Originally intended as Paramount's first talkie, this production was transferred to the Astoria studios in Queens after the January '28 fire that destroyed Paramount's Hollywood studios. It was eventually transferred from Astoria back to Hollywood, incurring another delay, allowing several other features to be released before this film finally made it to theaters in mid-1929.
Two of the Amazon Chorus Girls are played by Gordona Bennet and Utahna La Reno, a mother and daughter. They had previously appeared together in The Squaw Man (1914).
The film cast a number of former Broadway chorus girls who had had their heydays in the 1900s and 1910s. The performers mentioned by reporter Dan Thomas in his syndicated column from April, 1929, were Gordona Bennet, Cora Beach Shumway, Jane Crowley, Charlotte Ogden, and Kay Deslys.