Writer and Director Marty Feldman was disappointed with the theatrical cut because Universal Pictures edited their own version, which became the release print.
Ann-Margret (Flavia Geste) once said of working with Writer and Director Marty Feldman (Dagobert "Digby" Geste): "I expected him to be loud, but he was very calm. He maintained a sense of humor throughout, during the rains and everything, while those around him were falling apart. You'd never know it was his first film as a director."
The conception of this movie was actually a mistake. Writer and Director Marty Feldman had based the concept on an almost ludicrous misapprehension. Feldman had wanted to send up foreign legion movies like Beau Geste (1939). A screening of Beau Geste (1939) was organized for Feldman, who said: "I'd only sat looking at the picture for about ten minutes when it dawned on me that I hadn't meant 'Beau Geste' at all. The picture I'd been thinking of all along was 'Four Feathers'". "The Four Feathers", like "Beau Geste" had been remade numerous times. There had existed several versions of "The Four Feathers": Four Feathers (1915), The Four Feathers (1921), As Quatro Penas (1929), As Quatro Penas Brancas (1939) and Tormenta Sobre o Nilo (1955). Also, later versions have included The Four Feathers (1978) and As Quatro Plumas (2002). Feldman felt that "The Last Remake of Four Feathers" didn't sound quite right, so proceeded with his mistake to make "The Last Remake of Beau Geste" anyway.
The joke title, a spoof of the "Beau Geste" movies, particularly Beau Geste (1939), became the subject of parody in 2013, with the release of the documentary The Lost Remake of Beau Geste (2013). In 1939, a group of college students made a parody of the classic adventure Beau Geste (1939) on the same desert fort set used by the production. When Paramount Pictures learned of the unauthorized project, they ordered the kids to burn all of the prints and negatives. This documentary features interviews with the three surviving filmmakers and actors who were all now in their 90s, rare photographs taken on the set, and footage from the parody, unseen since 1940. So, as such, the parody title "The Last Remake of Beau Geste", a parody of Beau Geste (1939), begat a title, "The Lost Remake of Beau Geste", which was about another parody of the same movie.
Gary Cooper: As Beau Geste in an archival footage cameo appearance in an edited sequence from Beau Geste (1939) with Marty Feldman.