Production
Dynamite was DeMille's first full-length sound film (a silent version was also released simultaneously), and casting the right actors (with adequate voices) proved a difficult process. Development began on the heels of the release of his previous film, The Godless Girl, which had featured hastily-added sound footage (now currently unavailable for viewing) and which had been a box office disappointment. Numerous actors were screen-tested by assistant Mitchell Leisen by December 18, 1928, and apart from Ricardo Cortez and Monte Blue, most of them were B-movie actors; those tested but passed over included Buck Jones, Bob Custer, Jason Robards, Sr., Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams, Dean Jagger and Randolph Scott; Carmelita Geraghty, Katherine Crawford, Ann Cornwall, Merna Kennedy, Leila Hyams, Dorothy Burgess and Sally Blane. His final selections, Charles Bickford and Kay Johnson, were primarily known for their stage work. Leisen tried to interest DeMille in up-and-coming Carole Lombard for Johnson's role; allegedly, she can be glimpsed in the surviving versions of the film.
Filming of Dynamite began on January 29, 1929, and lasted until April 30. Scenes for the silent version were shot beginning on May 28 and ending on June 5. Charles Bickford would later describe the script as "'a mess of corn' with terrible dialogue."
Dorothy Parker, who was living in Los Angeles at the time, was commandeered to pen the lyrics for an original song for Dynamite. Her third try, titled "How Am I To Know" and set to music by Jack King, was accepted and featured in the film's prison sequence.
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“The problem of culture is seldom grasped correctly. The goal of a culture is not the greatest possible happiness of a people, nor is it the unhindered development of all their talents; instead, culture shows itself in the correct proportion of these developments. Its aim points beyond earthly happiness: the production of great works is the aim of culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
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“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)