Began shooting as a silent in August, 1928 at Metropolitan Studios, it would become an agonizingly long and complicated production. It was finally released on October 12, 1929 as a talkie after largely being re-shot with another director - Clyde Bruckman as a talkie (marking the first time Lloyd worked from a script) and painstakingly edited down from an original 16-reels (some 2 hours and forty-five minutes) to 12-reels. The silent version cost $521,000 and another $281,000 was spent on the sound negative. While the novelty of hearing Lloyd speak made it his largest grossing hit since The Freshman (1925), those steep production costs resulted in a huge drop in net profits from his earlier features.
Harold Lloyd's first talking picture. Originally filmed as a silent feature directed by Malcolm St. Clair it was largely re-shot for sound release and was directed by Clyde Bruckman. When it was previewed, it was over three hours in length, but cut to under two hours before general release. Both versions have been restored and preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
Clyde Bruckman's solution for reworking the film as a talkie was to eliminate half the silent version and re-shoot it as a talkie. The remaining half of the picture would be dubbed - - a cumbersome experience that Lloyd found difficult to accomplish. The result was awkward and it's easy to spot the dubbed scenes in the film (most apparent in the Chinatown sequence Lloyd shares with Noah Young as Officer Clancy). It's readily apparent that Young was especially poor at looping his own voice. The problem of the speaking actors locked in place under an immobile microphone in some of the freshly shot sound sequences is also painfully apparent.
Harold Lloyd lost the thumb and index finger on his right hand due to an exploding prop accident in 1919. He would always wear a glove with a prosthetic thumb and finger in his subsequent films. This is most notable when he shakes hands with officer Clancy.
Billie's car is a 1923 Ford Model T. The car the man is driving when he stops to help with gas is a 1926 Chrysler 70 Series roadster.