The 1 March 1929 Paramount Around the World, the Paramount studio publication, announced that it would be filming W. Somerset Maugham's internationally popular play, The Constant Wife, as both an all-dialogue and a silent film starring Ruth Chatterton in the role created by Ethel Barrymore. A month later, the same publication reported that Clive Brook and Hungarian actor Paul Lukas would portray Chatterton's romantic rivals in what was now being called The Marriage Holiday. The 31 March 1929 Film Daily noted that William Powell had joined the cast, without mentioning that he had replaced Lukas.
       According to a production directory in the 20 April 1929 Exhibitors Herald-World, the starting date for The Marriage Holiday was 9 March 1929. A shooting schedule was blocked out for twelve days, not counting rehearsal days, as per an item in the 3 April 1929 Variety. The 16 April 1929 Film Daily mentioned that Clive Brook had just completed his work on the film and was already en route to New York. The 1 June 1929 Paramount Around the World alerted the press that the title had been changed to Charming Sinners. Names from the play also had to be changed, Picture-Play Magazine noted, because of the still-primitive microphone's inability to accurately capture some pronunciations: "Certain blumpy-sounding names won't register." For that reason, "Constance Gurney" became "Kathryn Miles," "John Gurney" became "Robert Miles," "Marie Louise Bernham" became "Anne Marie Whitley," and "Ernst Krafter" was changed to "Karl Kraley."
       Charming Sinners opened on 6 July 1929 at the showcase Paramount Theater at West 43rd Street and Broadway, with an accompanying stage revue called "Radio Romance," a Paramount News reel, and a Max Fleischer song cartoon that stretched the running time to two hours and twenty minutes, according to the 13 July 1929 Motion Picture News.
       Harrison's Reports pointed out that the Hays Office had preemptively banned Maugham's original stage play from the screen, but "it has been so pruned in the construction of the scenario that very few people should object to the filming of it." The review added, "The style is high comedy. The voices are not clear because of poor recording." The 10 July 1929 Variety complained, "All dialog means all dialog in this instance. There's little else to it but talk. Among the missing ingredients is action." And all interior photography, except for brief newsreel footage of a horse race.
       The National Film Preservation Board (NFPB) included the silent version of this film on its list of Lost U.S. Silent Feature Films as of February 2021.