Elinor Glyn gave many confusing and sometimes contradictory explanations for what "It" meant, but she always said that "It" did not mean "sex appeal" necessarily and that anyone who said it did was vulgarizing her concept. Nonetheless, "It" became a euphemism for "sex appeal," which caused that pronoun to be entered into the American lexicon as a noun in the late 1920s.
Though the film is billed as an adaptation of Elinor Glyn's novel "It," the two stories have nothing to do with each other except that both revolve around her concept of "It." In her preface to the novel, Glyn wrote, "This is not the story of the moving picture entitled 'It,' but a character study of the story which the people in the picture read and discuss."
When Monty mentions the brand "Fermillac" he is talking about a then well-known cultured milk product that was sold to relieve digestive upsets and other ailments. It was sort of like a probiotic of its day.
Long thought to be a 'Lost Film', a print surfaced in Prague in the 1960s, was restored along with its original English language inter-titles, and re-released in 1978 by Paul Killiam Shows; it was upgraded by Thames Television International in 1992, with a top of the line musical score by Carl Davis, and it is this version that's now most frequently offered.
In the David Stenn biography of Clara Bow published in 1988, actress Priscilla Bonner recalled that Elinor Glyn visited the set a couple of times, wearing several purple veils that, it was obvious, were meant to mask recent plastic surgery scars that had not yet healed. Bonner said she disliked Glyn right away, finding her to be pretentious and artificial. However, she said she loved working with Bow.