During the filming of one of W.C. Fields' scenes, a mild earthquake struck Los Angeles. The earthquake was supposedly captured on film. In the film clip, Fields and his co-stars are standing in the hotel lobby set, when the picture begins to shake as if the camera is vibrating. A chandelier on the set begins to swing back and forth, and a lamp suddenly falls over. Fields calmly ushers his co-stars off the soundstage, telling them to stay calm and walk slowly. The "earthquake footage" of Fields was played in newsreels across the country in the weeks following the 1933 quake. Nearly forty years later, however, director A. Edward Sutherland admitted that the "earthquake footage" was a hoax concocted by himself and Fields. It was done by rigging wires on the lamp and chandelier, and shaking the camera to simulate an earthquake. Sutherland claimed that he and Fields were amazed when the "earthquake footage" was accepted as genuine by newsreel distributors. "We shared a big laugh and an even bigger drink", Sutherland recalled. To this day, the fake "earthquake footage" is occasionally broadcast and accepted as genuine by entertainment television shows such as Access Hollywood (1996). The footage appeared in Hollywood Out-takes and Rare Footage (1983).
International socialite Peggy Hopkins Joyce played herself in this movie. A former showgirl for the Ziegfeld Follies and Earl Carroll's Vanities, Joyce had married and divorced four different millionaires by the 1930s, and married two more in her lifetime. She became a world-famous celebrity for her marriages and her scandalous affairs with the likes of Charles Chaplin, Walter Chrysler, and Irving Thalberg. She was a well-known collector of diamonds and furs, and was the model for Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). The movie includes jokes about Joyce's many divorces, and she openly states that she is at the International House "to find another millionaire husband." Her infamous reputation was such that in the movie, Tommy Nash (Stuart Erwin) only has to mention to his girl that he drove Peggy Hopkins Joyce to the hotel to make her mad enough to leave him.
According to the June 5, 1933 issue of Time Magazine, the Disney short Three Little Pigs (1933) opened with this film.
The exterior sets of Shanghai and Wu-Hu, China, were recycled from Shanghai Express (1932), starring Marlene Dietrich and Clive Brook.