This film provided Boris Karloff with one of his first acting jobs in Hollywood. He worked as an extra, and can be spotted in the sequence where several of Sarzeau's men storm the inn where William Brooks (Douglas Fairbanks) is staying. Karloff is at the front of the crowd, sporting a dark mustache and wearing a cloth cap. He can also be seen on the staircase as the men race up the stairs to Brooks's room.
According to director Joseph Henabery, the film was created as a form of propaganda. The Woodrow Wilson administration approached actor-producer Douglas Fairbanks and prevailed upon him to create a motion picture which would promote the Fourteen Points of the League of Nations. Fairbanks consented and work began on this film. However, mid-way through production, the League of Nations proposal collapsed, and the film's plot had to be rewritten. Reportedly, Henabery loathed making the film as a result.
When the Fairbanks character first explores the fictitious European kingdom, he spots and is startled by the presence of a man, and asks if he is also running for President in that country. Contemporary audiences would have laughed at the appearance of the actor who is a lookalike for perennial US Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, who headed the Democratic Party's ticket in 1896, 1900 and 1908. Although he lost all three times, when the movie was made in 1919 he had not renounced his ambition to run again.
This is the first feature to be released through United Artists.
Included among the American Film Institute's 2000 list of the 500 movies nominated for the Top 100 Funniest American Movies.