Carol Kane was made up to resemble silent film star Zasu Pitts. Kane also appeared in another movie about the silent era released in the same year. That movie was Ken Russell's Valentino (1977). Both films featured Rudolph Valentino in their stories.
Gene Wilder conceived the idea for this movie during late 1975 when Wilder said to his friend, Production Designer Terence Marsh, that he would like to play Rudolph Valentino's double, with Valentino playing a silent secondary supporting role to his stand-in leading character. Marsh loved the concept, and Wilder proceeded to develop the picture.
The name of Adolph Zitz, the studio mogul played by Dom DeLuise, is a spoof of silent era Producer presenter Adolph Zukor. In real-life, Zukor moved from exhibition into production, and eventually consolidated several smaller companies into creating Paramount Pictures, retiring from Paramount in 1959, where he stayed on as Emeritus CEO until 1976. Ironically, in the film, Zitz is the head of Rainbow Studios, who is a rival to Paramount Pictures.
The film was freely adapted from Federico Fellini's "The White Sheik" (The White Sheik (1952)). Halliwell's noted that "The film carries a credit to Federico Fellini 'for encouragement at the right time'".
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By what name was The World's Greatest Lover (1977) officially released in India in English?
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