According to her autobiography, Myrna Loy was originally going to wear white empire-style dress for the party sequence, but Jeanette MacDonald was jealous of how she looked insisted that she had to wear it herself instead. Loy surrendered the dress, but then went down the to the costume room and, with a friend's help, put together the black lace outfit she wears in the final film. She stole the scene.
Among scenes and dialogue commonly deleted by local censors were references to the "virgin spring"; the scene of the Princess's examination by the physician; and Maurice taking measurements of the princess. In 1937, letters from Joseph I. Breen of the AMPP to Paramount indicate that Breen advised against the re-issue of the film because he felt that the severe editing required to pass the censors would ruin the film. In a 1949 letter, Breen approved a re-release with the following deletions: Any reference to "virgin springs"; the song "A Woman Needs Something Like That"; and the scene of Myrna Loy in a "transparent nightgown." According to a memo in the file, the four-reel re-release was unsuccessful
Among the deletions in the film's 1949 reissue was Myrna Loy's portion of the "Mimi" reprise. In the Production Code era, Miss Loy's negligee was deemed too revealing.
For its post Production Code re-release (after 1934), this film was trimmed down to 96 minutes. Those missing minutes have never been restored and are presumed lost.
MPAA/PCA files at the AMPAS Library reveal that while most of the songs in the film were approved prior to release, the Hays Office objected to the suggestive nature of the song, "A Woman Needs Something Like That," although it was left in the film. Jesse Lasky, Jr. responded in a letter to the MPPDA's concern about the line "Must we sleep tonight all alone?" in the song "Love Me Tonight," by noting that the line had been changed to "Let's drink deep tonight all alone." Concern that French Royalists might take offense to the film prompted the Hays Office to give a copy of the script to the Los Angeles French consul, Henri Didot. Based on Didot's comments, it was determined that only the scene in which the princess strikes a servant should be deleted. In addition, Didot maintained that as long as the duke and princess were not implied to have royal blood, the film should not give offense. The film was rejected in Czechoslovakia, approved without eliminations in Quebec, New York and Kansas, and approved with eliminations in Australia, Britain, Chicago, Ontario, British Columbia, Ohio, Alberta, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.
One of over 700 Paramount Productions, filmed between 1929 and 1949, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by Universal ever since.
This film was selected to the National Film Registry, Libary of Congress, in 1990.