Composer Robert Israel was commissioned by Turner Classic Movies to compose a new orchestral music score for their new High-Def broadcast edition, which aired on their network on June 1, 2014.
In the archives of the Hollywood Holy Virgin Mary Russian Orthodox Cathedral at 650 Micheltorena Street, it is referenced that a scene from this movie with John Gilbert was filmed at the oldest part of the church building.
The film was originally to have been directed by Viktor Tourjansky, but it took such a long time getting the script together that he moved on to another project. George W. Hill then took over, but the studio was dissatisfied with the way it turned out. Clarence Brown was brought in and wound up reshooting almost all of it.
John Gilbert had risen to the top ranks of Hollywood stars by 1928. Under contract to MGM, the most glamorous studio in the world, he was a favorite of director King Vidor, who directed him in five pictures including the acclaimed The Big Parade (1925) and the swashbuckling costume adventure Bardelys the Magnificent (1926), and screen superstar Greta Garbo, who starred opposite him in Flesh and the Devil (1926) and Love (1927). He was poised to take the mantle of screen heartthrob after the death of Rudolph Valentino, and MGM, which didn't always see eye to eye with the often outspoken and critical star, poured on the production value for The Cossacks, his follow-up to Love and his most expensive film to date.
MGM built a massive Cossack village set in Laurel Canyon and bragged in press releases that they had brought 112 real-life Cossacks from Russia (they lived in the village during production). Money was lavished on costumes and location shooting (very little was shot in the studio) and a spectacular special effect involving an epic landslide across a mountain path. "[W]hile it has its artificial vein," wrote New York Times film critic Mordaunt Hall, the production "is sometimes quite impressive because of the earnest attention to the atmospheric detail. According to Russian settings designer Alexander Toluboff's obituary in the 2 July 1940 Los Angeles Times, the Laurel Canyon village set was still standing at that time.