The program outside the Sultana Theatre includes Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938), with a "Last Day" notice pasted over it - a tribute by the cast and crew of this film to Chan star (and fellow 20th Century Fox player) Warner Oland, who passed away in his native Sweden while this film was in production in August, 1938. The poster includes the line, "starring Warner Oland". There is another connection between the Moto and Chan films in that the third film, "Mr. Moto's Gamble," was originally intended to be a Charlie Chan film but was switched to a Moto film. Characteristic of a Charlie Chan film, one of Chan's sons played a role in the film.
George Sanders so resented being assigned to a Mr. Moto B-movie that he characteristically ran up big lunch bills at upscale restaurants and charged them to director Norman Foster's account. In addition, after the actor found out the script girls had chipped in to buy Foster a bottle of his favorite bonded whiskey for his birthday, Sanders found it and drank it himself.
The reason this film is shown more often than any of the others is because it's in the public domain, and no longer under the legal control of 20th Century-Fox.
The failure of the original copyright holder to renew the film's copyright resulted in it falling into public domain, meaning that virtually anyone could duplicate and sell a VHS/DVD copy of the film. Therefore, many of the versions of this film available on the market are either severely (and usually badly) edited and/or of extremely poor quality, having been duped from second- or third-generation (or more) copies of the film.
Of Fox's eight Moto films, this was the sixth to be produced, and the seventh to be released.