The film is part silent, with intertitles, and part sound, which was important to feature the main character's talent as a singer, although the title song Weary River was nevertheless dubbed by a professional singer. One scene near the end features an orchestra playing on-screen on set that is a radio studio, while traditional silent movie sound is substituted for real sound. Then the scene technology audibly changes to sound recorded on film, with the same orchestra appearing to play for real (possibly dubbed) as the main character begins to sing (although he is listed as dubbed) in a radio performance that prompts his sweetheart to call the radio studio. The scene is an unusual mix of technologies during a period of transition from silents to sound.
This film was restored by The Library of Congress Motion Picture Division, the UCLA Film and Television Archive and Warner Bros./Turner Entertainment Company.
When it came time for Richard Barthelmess to sing the title song (not once but four times in the course of the film), the Vitaphone technicians performed a bit of audio-visual sleight-of-hand. While Barthelmess moves his lips, the voice heard is that of Johnny Murray. A Photoplay article of July 1929 reported that Murray also had been retained to provide Barthelmess' voice in the future, in the event that he starred in any other musicals. However, in this film, Barthelmess does indeed sing a few bars of Frankie & Johnnie on his own, most pleasantly and naturally, to Betty Compson, before she interrupts him, claiming she didn't ask him for 'Grand Opera'.
In September 1928 Warner Bros. Pictures purchased a majority interest in First National Pictures, and from that point on all "First National" productions were actually made under Warner Bros. control, even though the two companies continued to retain separate identities until the mid-'30s, after which time "A Warner Bros.-First National Picture" was often used.
Released as both a sound and a silent picture as was often the case at the beginning of the sound era, as a lot of theaters had not yet installed the relatively expensive sound equipment, and there were still different, competing sound technologies.