Anecdotes

The film did poorly at the box-office, becoming the biggest flop up to that time for both Gary Cooper and Samuel Goldwyn; it was estimated that it lost close to $700,000.

The film was criticized for many reasons but chief among them was the casting of Gary Cooper in the lead role - many felt the part called for a brash, swashbuckling hero rather than the low-key cowboy persona that Cooper exemplified. It is interesting to note, then, the man who first brought the idea to Goldwyn: swashbuckler extraordinaire Douglas Fairbanks.

Film debut of Sigrid Gurie. NOTE: She was producer Samuel Goldwyn's protégé, whom he publicly labeled "the Norwegian Garbo--even though she was born in Brooklyn, NY. Columnists had a field day with this story, providing more bad press for the movie just prior to release.

In Italy, the fascist censors considered the film disrespectful to Marco Polo and insisted on re-dubbing it to make the protagonist a Scotsman and releasing it under the title "Uno Scozzese alla corte del gran Khan," translating to "A Scotsman at the Great Khan's court."

Lana Turner, playing her third credited role, later recalled in a Gary Cooper biography that her "fancy black oriental wig" had been glued around her face with spirit gum, while she felt extremely uncomfortable in her costumes and, worse yet, had her eyebrows shaved off at the insistence of Samuel Goldwyn himself, and replaced with false slanting black ones. She complained that this "ruined me," as her eyebrows were removed for the role and never fully grew back.

Portions of the film were shot on location at Malibu Lake, where 200 yards of the Great Wall of China were reconstructed and the crew was put on a 24-hour-a-day schedule.