The leopard Thomas Meighan is carrying in the movie was a real leopard. It had killed a man in a nearby zoo and was to be euthanized, but director Cecil B. De Mille refused to have it killed. The leopard was drugged with chloroform before it was let near the actor, who then did the scene carrying the animal on his shoulder.
Gloria Swanson insisted on doing the sequence with the lions herself, even after director Cecil B. De Mille had scrapped the idea for safety reasons. According to Swanson in her 1980 autobiography, there were two trainers on the set, along with Swanson's father.
The biggest hit of 1919 for Paramount Pictures.
According to Gloria Swanson, the lion with which she shared a scene killed somebody two weeks after filming.
One of the reasons director Cecil B. DeMille dropped the original title was that he was afraid that audiences would confuse the word "admirable" with "admiral."