Dan Beery, American competition rower, Olympic champion and world champion.
The movie features Grace Moore as Lind, Reginald Denny as a lover, and Wallace Beery as P. T. Barnum; Beery would play Barnum again four years later in The Mighty Barnum.
The story was also made into the 1959 Broadway musical Take Me Along starring Jackie Gleason as the drunken Uncle Sid (Beery's role in the film), Walter Pidgeon as Nat and Robert Morse as Richard.
This is Paramount's first feature with dialogue on the soundtrack and the first time Beery's distinctive voice was recorded for a film, although the talking is extremely limited, similar to Warner Bros.'s The Jazz Singer the previous year.
Gable had appeared in a minor supporting role in another Beery film, The Secret Six, earlier the same year.
This film was such a runaway hit that it and its near-sequel Tugboat Annie, which reteamed Dressler and Beery in similar roles, boosted both to superstar status.
Wallace Beery and Louise Brooks worked together the following year in Beggars of Life, a well-received early sound film.
Beery and Gable would work together twice more, in Hell Divers the same year, in which Gable was billed second to Beery and had a role almost as large, and China Seas, also with Harlow, four years later.