Douglas Fairbanks claimed to have "discovered" Maria Alba in the islands, even though Spanish actress Alba (real name Maria Casajuana) was signed by the Fox Film Corporation after winning a Fox Film contest in Spain in 1926. She then sailed to the United States in 1927 where she appeared in her first film five years before this movie was released.
Alfred Newman, who had previously scored Fairbanks' Reaching for the Moon, composed the score. Mr. Newman recycled the main theme from this film for another South Seas-set film, The Hurricane (1937). To promote that film, the theme was adapted into a pop song, "Moon of Manakoora," which became a major hit for Bing Crosby. Newman's score for The Hurricane was nominated for an Academy Award.
Fairbanks biographer Jeffrey Vance writes "Mr. Robinson Crusoe, his last personal production, was designed to meet his responsibilities in the least demanding way. The film was conceived as an inexpensive travelogue masquerading as a narrative film...Free from the hated dialogue that had so confined his type of film, Fairbanks should have been in his element. And yet, despite the primarily visual aspect of the film, his customary ebullience is not in evidence; his character is a hypomanic middle-aged man."
The failure of the original copyright holder to renew the film's copyright resulted in it falling into public domain, meaning that virtually anyone could duplicate and sell a VHS/DVD copy of the film. Therefore, many of the versions of this film available on the market are either severely (and usually badly) edited and/or of extremely poor quality, having been duped from second- or third-generation (or more) copies of the film.
Publicity records note the following: The Invader, private yacht of the president of United Artists, Joseph Schenck , sailed some of the staff from San Francisco to Papeete, Tahiti, in early March, where the film was made in its entirety, using the islanders as extras. According to modern sources, the extras were available for one dollar per day.