After only a few weeks filming, director Lowell Sherman developed pneumonia and died. His replacement, Rouben Mamoulian, scrapped his footage and began again from scratch.
After the tremendous success of the short La Cucaracha, John Hay Whitney and his cousin Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney formed Pioneer Pictures to produce color films, of which this was the first.
Being the first Technicolor film, the color at the time did not look too realistic; one critic commented that the cast looked like "boiled salmon dipped in mayonnaise".
Mrs. Leslie Carter, the legendary Broadway actress from the turn-of-the-century, has an uncredited part as "Woman" in this film. Five years later, Miriam Hopkins would portray Mrs. Carter in the Warner Brothers film _Lady With Red Hair (1940)_.
Preview audiences complained that the sound was unintelligible. RKO re-recorded the entire soundtrack by re-recording their Photophone track on a Western Electric rival process, and then transferred it to the Photophone system for the release print.
The first feature-length three-color film.
The play by Langdon Mitchell, "Becky Sharp", opened in New York City, New York, USA on 12 September 1899 and had 116 performances. There were 3 revivals, the last in 1929. Another play with the title "Vanity Fair", by different authors opened in New York in 1911.
The restored version is being preserved by the UCLA Film Archives.