Leni Riefenstahl's visit to the United States in 1938 was mainly aimed at finding a US distributor for the film. Faced with fierce protests from many American organizations, in particular the 'Anti-Nazi League', her plan never came to fruition. The first screening in the United States was organised in Chicago in November 1938 by Avery Brundage, president of the US Olympic Committee and an ardent Nazi sympathiser. The private reception was hosted by Mrs. Claire Dux Swift, ex-wife of the German film star Hans Albers. The second screening (also private) took place on 14th December 1938 at the California Club in presence of Olympic medalists and screen Tarzans Johnny Weissmuller and Glenn Morris (Riefenstahl's ex-lover), as well as Olympic diver Marjorie Gestring. For this screening, Riefenstahl submitted a copy where she had edited out almost all the scenes featuring Hitler.
During the preliminary shooting sessions on the shores along the Baltic Sea in 1936, Leni Riefenstahl wanted to immortalize herself as a symbol of 'Aryan beauty,' and posed naked before her stunned collaborators. The stunning monochrome, showing Riefenstahl from behind with her arms held aloft and her head craned back, was achieved by underexposing the image and employing a yellow filter to highlight the cloudy sky, drawing the silhouette of Riefenstahl's statuesque form with the help of two powerful spotlights, one (more raw) placed in front of the subject, and the second (softened by a frost) behind her. The impromptu spur-of-the-moment nature of the photo is highlighted by a mark left on her buttocks in the final image, as specialists of the fashion industry teach, a model who is about to pose nude should not wear underwear or elastic constraints which may temporarily mark the body. After years of grueling athletic training necessary for the rapid shooting pace of the earlier mountain films in which she starred, Riefenstahl (in spite of her 34 years at the time) posed defiantly next to other models, holding her own next to girls who were little more than teenagers. The final composition was subsequently used as the main image on many posters and pieces of advertising material for the film.
The production company Olympia-Film-GmbH, owned by Leni Riefenstahl and her brother Heinz, was only a front to preserve the film's political independence in front of the International Olympic Committee. It was, in fact, entirely funded by the Third Reich. The original contract stipulated that Olympia-Film-GmbH would be dissolved once production completed and the copyrights would be the sole property of the Reich. The dissolution only took place on 9th January 1942, with Riefenstahl being awarded 20% of the film's total earnings and naming the State as the only lawful copyright owner.
Leni Riefenstahl first contacted the biggest German film studio, Ufa, in order for them to finance the film. Friedrich A. Mainz, the studio head refused because of cost, so she contacted Tobis-Filmkunst who agreed to finance the film and put up ½ million Reichmarks upfront (three times the cost of a standard film at the time). The contract was only signed in December 1936, four months after the end of the Olympic Games.