Early working titles for the film includedLucky StrikeandThe Northern Story.The film, inspired in part by the gruesome Donner Party story, was shot (over a period of 15 months from spring 1924-summer 1925) both on a Hollywood studio back lot and in Truckee, California/Nevada, and premiered in New York at the Strand Theatre in mid-August, 1925.Producer John Carpenter conceived of this film as the first in an anthology of stand-alone Halloween season-related horror films, although the plan failed.BackgroundMiracle on 34th Street(1947) is director George Seaton""s popular and perennial Thanksgiving and Christmas classic holiday film - a dramatic comedy-fantasy about the commercialization of Santa Claus (Kris Kringle) and Christmas itself.In fact, Karas"" musical instrument was a leading film character and advertised as such: "He""ll have you in a dither with his zither (a laptop string instrument).I must ask you to forgive their somewhat lackadaisical manners, but I have conditioned them - or brain-washed them, which I understand is the new American word.