'Rudolph Valentino' wanted to project a more aggressively masculine image in this film, so in order to establish this with the cast and crew, he sent home stunt double Nicky Caruso and did the spectacular opening stunt - leaping onto a horse and chasing down a runaway carriage - himself.
The film was originally titled "The Black Eagle", but was changed when it was discovered that Douglas Fairbanks was producing the similarly-titled Der schwarze Pirat (1926).
Director Clearance Brown created a memorable movie moment when he moved the camera from one end of a banquet table to the other in a gliding, airborne shot. He explained to silent movie historian Kevin Brownlow how it was done: "There was one elaborate shot I did in The Eagle; a long tracking shot down a banquet table. The camera started with a character eating at one end. Then it traveled along the middle of the table - which must have been sixty feet long. To get the camera in that position was very difficult; no equipment existed to do it. So we made two perambulators. We put one on each side of the table, and we constructed a bridge, with stress beams so it was rigid. Then we dropped a crosspiece and fastened the camera from the top, so the bottom of the camera would travel along the top of the table. I liked the effect so well I did it again in Anna Karenina."
Included among the American Film Institute's 2001 list of 400 movies nominated for the top 100 Most Heart-Pounding American Movies.