The shots of the native migration are taken from Merian C. Cooper's silent documentary Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life (1925) which traces the arduous journey of Iranian nomads. It is probable that the first half of the story was written to take advantage of this footage and the production value it provided.
Stock footage from The Four Feathers (1929) is used to augment the battle scenes in the later half of the film.
One of over 700 Paramount productions, filmed between 1929-49, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by Universal ever since. Its initial telecast took place in Seattle Monday 20 October 1958 on KIRO (Channel 7), followed by Chicago Monday 2 February 1959 on WBBM (Channel 2) and by Boston Tuesday 3 February 1959 on WBZ (Channel 4); interest in seeing a forgotten early Cary Grant (I) film slowly spread around the country as it was first aired in Ashevile 27 April 1959 on WLOS (Channel 13), in San Francisco 1 May 1959 on KPIX (Channel 5), in Milwaukee 2 May 1959 on WITI (Channel 6), in Omaha 25 May 1959 on KETV (Channel 7), in Pittsburgh 25 October 1959 on KDKA (Channel 2), in Grand Rapids 29 December 1959 on WOOD (Channel 8), in Johnstown 15 January 1960 on WJAC (Channel 6), in Toledo 22 February 1960 on WTOL (Channel 11), in Hartford 4 March 1960 on WTIC (Channel 3), in Phoenix 15 March 1960 on KVAR (Channel 12), in Miami 10 April 1960 on WTVJ (Channel 4) and, finally in New York City 22 July 1960 on WCBS (Channel 2). It was released on DVD as a single 14 October 2010, again 17 May 2012 as part of Turner Classic Movies' Cary Grant: The Early Years Collection, again 4 June 2013 as part of Universal's War: 10 Movie Collection, again as a single 5 August 2014 as part of Universal's MOD Collection, and again 19 April 2016 as one of 18 [Paramount] titles in Universal's Cary Grant: The Vault Collection.
Cary Grant, impersonating a nobleman, uses a fictitious title. When Gertrude Michael asks about the name, he says, "It's from Burke's Peerage by way of Ananias." Burke's Peerage lists all the genuine titles in the United Kingdom, but Ananias is an early Christian who was struck dead for lying, so the name has come to mean "liar."
