Malot suggests that Grace contact a wealthy American, army officer Captain Rex Strong (Clyde Fillmore), who might be able to assist her financially.

[5] The cast for The Devil’s Pass Key was assembled from vaudeville and musical comedy personnel reflecting von Stroheim’s predilection for naturalistic acting and his antipathy towards stage-trained performers.

Actor Sam de Grasse, now a von Stroheim cast regular, was joined by Mae Busch, Maude George and Clyde Fillmore to play the leads in the film.

The immense amount of footage was a product of von Stroheim’s “habit of shooting dozens of takes in the hope of making a magical selection in the cutting room.”[9] In terms of its length, The Devil’s Pass Key measured approximately 7500 feet; the finished film totaled a modest running time of about two hours, suggesting none of the profligacy in the duration that characterized subsequent von Stroheim films, first manifested in his Foolish Wives (1922).

[10] Despite these delays in editing, The Devil’s Pass Key was completed with notable “efficiency and dispatch.”[11] The final print was shipped to New York on 4 April 1920 for press screening and to arrange for booking by Universal’s sales department.

[12] In order to entice critical and popular anticipation for The Devil’s Pass Key, producer Carl Laemmle delayed release of the picture.

Universal was particularly eager to promote von Stroheim’s success in creating cinematic “spectacle and verisimilitude” and to link his personal idiosyncrasies to this phenomenon.

Historian Richard Koszarski reported in 1983 that Universal’s Woodbridge, New Jersey unit possessed a fragile nitrate negative of the film, a reel of which was largely decomposed.