In the film as originally shot, Buster Keaton appears in a comic relief supporting part as the prisoner "Lulu." This would have been his first official appearance in an MGM feature production since Louis B. Mayer fired him in February 1933. Several stills survive of Keaton in this role, in a scene with Jeanette MacDonald. Although Keaton's scenes were cut before the film was released, he is still visible in the background during several production numbers-particularly "Stouthearted Men."
"New Moon" opened at the Imperial Theatre on September 19, 1928 and ran for 509 performances.
Original director W.S. Van Dyke worked on this film for about two weeks, but was reassigned to direct I Take This Woman (1940), leaving producer Robert Z. Leonard to take his place.
One of the films included in "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (and how they got that way)" by Harry Medved and Randy Lowell.
An item in Hollywood Reporter comments that Nat Pendleton was to have appeared in this picture. Pendleton can be seen very briefly early in the picture as a bondsman standing next to Nelson Eddy. It is possible that his part was intended to be longer but was cut prior to the film's preview. In the same scene, silent star Buster Keaton is seen on the opposite side of Eddy, however, he is also unbilled in contemporary sources.
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