The movie was the film debut of Beatty, whose skills as a lion tamer in circuses had brought him fame since his late teens and made him a national celebrity. Beatty, as in his three subsequent films, plays a fictionalized version of himself also named "Clyde Beatty". The movie proved to be one of the studio's most popular releases in 1933 and was reissued several times in second-run theaters into the early 1950s.