Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, husband and wife, were a celebrated stage acting team. This film was based upon the roles they had played on Broadway in 1924 and it was their ONLY starring film role together. They had both appeared in silent films. They would remain married until his death in 1977.
On the final day of filming, MGM head of production Irving Thalberg, informed the Lunts that they would be required to re-shoot what Thalberg thought was an unsatisfactory scene. The Lunts protested because they thought they had done their best but were finally coerced into re-shooting the scene. When Thalberg saw the newly shot footage he accused Alfred Lunt of purposely crossing his eye as to sabotage the re-shoot. Lunt replied that he couldn't do that on purpose and the reason why the eye was wandering was because of fatigue. Before Thalberg could ask for another re-shoot, Lunt went to the studio barber to get a haircut, making it impossible to re-shoot anymore.
The play from which a scene is shown at the beginning of the film is Maxwell Anderson's "Elizabeth the Queen," in which we see Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt recreating the roles of Queen Elizabeth I and Lord Essex, which they had played on Broadway in the actual original production of "Elizabeth the Queen" the year before.
The Guardsman (1931) is a 1931 American pre-Code film based on the play Testor by Ferenc Molnár. It stars Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Roland Young and Zasu Pitts. It opens with a stage re-enactment of the final scene of Maxwell Anderson's "Elizabeth the Queen," with Fontanne as Elizabeth and Lunt as the Earl of Essex, but otherwise has nothing to do with that play.
Ferenc Molnár's play opened in Budapest in 1911. English versions were staged in London (as "Playing With Fire") and New York (as "Where Ignorance Is Bliss") in 1913. But the definitive English version, adapted by Philip Moeller, opened in New York in 1924 and starred Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.