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.Barry yells after them: "Ice cream!" The old man of the family reverentially opines:They can fly rings around the moon, but we""re years ahead of them on the highway...to the end of the line." Its tagline from a poster declared: "You can""t kiss away a Murder!"The sensational film was unlike many other films of its time - its storyline of a deliberate and brutal crime inspired by adultery and the promise of insurance money was considered innately amoral, objectionable, and distasteful by the censorious Hays Office (a "blueprint for the perfect murder").He slips the picture into his coat pocket as he prepares to change into his street clothes.The next show is a medium shot of Annabelle Lee herself (Marion Mack), standing in front of a picket fence that is also in front of a rose trellis.