This was the first movie Bette Davis made under her contract to Warner Bros., the studio under which she did most of her best-known work of the 1930s and '40s. Her earlier six films were made for various studios, all of which let her go.
George Arliss and Ivan F. Simpson played the same roles ten years earlier in the 1922 silent version.
George Arliss was nearly 40 years older than Bette Davis, who plays his fiancée in this movie.
George Arliss called Bette Davis on the telephone and asked her to audition for the role of his fiancee. Davis thought that somebody was trying to play a practical joke on her. After she realized it was indeed Arliss, she rushed over to the studio to audition and got the part.