During the scene where Harold Lloyd's character meets Jackie the lion, on the first take when Lloyd pets Jackie, the lion actually bit him on his right hand. However, he was not injured because the lion's teeth scraped against his two prosthetic fingers (Lloyd had lost most of his right hand in an on-set accident in 1919). After that, he refused to pet the lion ever again on- or off-screen, and in the second take, which was used for the film, his terrified squirming over the lion standing next to him is genuine.
It was Howard Hughes, Preston Sturges' partner in California Pictures Corporation, who re-cut the film and retitled it "Mad Wednesday"--not Columbia Pictures chief Harry Cohn, as has long been believed.
The film opens with the following written foreword: "The football game you are about to see was actually photographed in 1923 as part of Harold Lloyd's famous picture Harold Lloyd, der Sportstudent (1925): The story of a water boy who thought he was a member of the team."