A clip from the film appears in El ocaso de una vida (1950), where Norma Desmond (played by Gloria Swanson), a silent movie star who is planning a comeback, watches one of her former films. Erich von Stroheim plays Max Von Mayerling, Desmond's butler, who serves as projectionist for the film clip. It is later revealed that Max was the silent movie director who discovered Norma Desmond. Director Billy Wilder recalled that it was von Stroheim's idea to use the clip from Queen Kelly (1932) in El ocaso de una vida (1950), to add realism.
When Tully Marshall dribbled tobacco juice on Gloria Swanson's hand during the wedding sequence and explained that director Erich von Stroheim ordered him to do it, it was the final straw. She called producer Joseph P. Kennedy and demanded that von Stroheim be fired. He was, effectively shutting down the production.
According to the crew members who worked on this film, the girls who accompany Wolfram to the palace gates were played by actual prostitutes who worked at one of the best brothels in Hollywood.
Erich von Stroheim reportedly spent over 24 hours shooting the scene in which Queen Regina, played by Seena Owen, is introduced in her boudoir. Owen had to be nude, covering her chest with a white cat. After a few takes the cat began to scratch her and had to be fitted with mittens.
After shooting only one-third of the film (four hours), director Erich von Stroheim was fired by producer-star Gloria Swanson. Two years later, additional footage was shot to complete the film. Since von Stroheim owned part of the property, he refused to grant releasing rights in the U.S. and elsewhere for this bastardized version. It was not exhibited in the U.S. until after El ocaso de una vida (1950), when it received minor theatrical release and a showing on television in 1966.
Erich von Stroheim: [janitor] Wolfram returns to the palace after a night of drunken revelry and passes a cleaning person with a vacuum cleaner on his way up the palace's grand staircase.
Erich von Stroheim: [prostitution] Prince Wolfram and his adjutant arrive at the palace in the opening scenes accompanied by a group of prostitutes. Kelly is also later sent to live in a brothel in Africa, which she takes over.