Irene Castle served as a technical advisor on the film. According to Ginger Rogers, Castle disliked every costume she wore and deemed them anachronistic. Due to censorship restrictions, Rogers' costumes evoked late 1930s fashions rather than the more daring styles of Castle's 1910s era. After Rogers refused to bob her hair to portray the hairstyle that Irene had popularized, Castle became more displeased. The studio silenced Castle's protests with an additional payment of $5,000.
Censorship restrictions undermined the film's period authenticity and historical accuracy. Following the rigid enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934, censor Joseph Breen refused to allow any historically accurate portrayal of the Ragtime Era or the early Jazz Age with its bra-less flappers, rakish menswear, libertine sexuality, and copious drinking.
Irene Castle criticized the casting of white actor Walter Brennan to portray her life-long companion and manservant Walter Ash, who was black. She also noted that she and Vernon Castle always toured with a black orchestra, James Reese Europe's Society Orchestra, not a white band. Studio executives overruled Castle's protests in order for the film to play in theaters throughout the southern United States. Due to the film's factual errors and conservative depiction of the era, Castle disowned the film.
The ninth of ten dancing partnership films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and their last musical for RKO Studios, and their only film based on a true story.
Blonde-haired Ginger Rogers was cast to portray brunette Irene Castle, a fashion trendsetter who became world famous for her short boyish bob. Upon being cast in the role, Rogers refused to either bob or dye her hair. She also insisted upon wearing a contemporary 1939 hairstyle. Irene Castle's real hairstyle and unique fashions can be seen in the earlier film, The Whirl of Life (1915).