Many of the performers of the earlier Broadway version of the Ziegfeld Follies were cast in the film as themselves, including Fanny Brice and Harriet Hoctor, the ballet dancer and contortionist. The Great Ziegfeld marked Rainer's second Hollywood film role after Escapade (also with Powell). Fanny Brice appears as a comedian in the abridged song sequence "My Man" and played an effective version of herself in addition to her routine comic role as the funny girl. Nat Pendleton, a freestyle wrestler who had won the silver medal at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp and had appeared alongside Powell in The Thin Man (1934), was cast as the circus strongman Eugen Sandow.
Many of the performers of the earlier Broadway version of the Ziegfeld Follies were cast in the film as themselves, including Fanny Brice and Harriet Hoctor, the ballet dancer and contortionist. The Great Ziegfeld marked Rainer's second Hollywood film role after Escapade (also with Powell). Fanny Brice appears as a comedian in the abridged song sequence "My Man" and played an effective version of herself in addition to her routine comic role as the funny girl. Nat Pendleton, a freestyle wrestler who had won the silver medal at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp and had appeared alongside Powell in The Thin Man (1934), was cast as the circus strongman Eugen Sandow.