Trivia

It is explained in the film that the can-can was considered a lewd and lascivious dance (in reality often performed without panties).

When USSR premier Nikita Khrushchev and his family visited Hollywood in September of 1959, they were treated to the filming of a dance scene for the upcoming Shirley MacLaine musical Can-Can, which evidently left the Soviet leader decidedly unimpressed. Khrushchev and his cronies gazed with undisguised horror, as MacLaine and her scantily-clad dancer comrades kicked their legs, swirled their petticoats, waggled their knees, and ended up with their skirts over their heads and their bottoms pointing directly at the guest of honor and his family." Krushchev wound up giving a one-word summation of the performance to the publicity flacks who then asked for his comment: "DISGUSTING!" He then added, "The face of mankind is prettier than its backside... The thing is immoral. We do not want that sort of thing for the Russians."

A duet of Frank Sinatra and Maurice Chevalier singing Cole Porter's "I Love Paris" was deleted from the release print, although the song is performed by a chorus at the beginning and end of the film. The Sinatra-Chevalier audio has been presented on Capitol's 1960 movie-soundtrack LP and 1990 CD, plus on an EMI CD import from Britain in 2000, but the film footage has yet to surface. Rendered solo by Mr. Sinatra, recorded in Los Angeles on April 13, 1960, and arranged and conducted by Nelson Riddle (who served as the film's music arranger and conductor), a second "I Love Paris" originally was released later that year on a Capitol 45-rpm single. In 1998, the label added the solo "I Love Paris" as a bonus track on Mr. Sinatra's "Come Fly with Me" CD reissue.

During the opening song, François Durnais (Frank Sinatra) says 'You'll never make it' to a very short man with a taller woman. The man, carrying a painting, is a reference to Henri de Toulouse Lautrec. Strangely enough, in the history of the musical, Broadway producers Feuer and Martin and original book writer, Abe Burrows, had sought out to create a "Toulouse-Lautrec-type" show, for which Burrows was sent to Paris for a few weeks to do onsite research. The following year, 1952, the original "Moulin Rouge" film (the one indeed about Toulouse-Lautrec, starring Jose Ferrer and directed by John Huston, but a non-musical film), was released.

Gwen Verdon won the 1954 Tony Award (New York City) for Supporting or Featured Actress in a Musical for "Can-Can".