A studio production chart in the 6 July 1929 Exhibitors Herald-World cited a start date of 10 June 1929 for The Thirteenth Chair at M-G-M's Culver City, CA, studio.
       According to the New Movie Magazine, Margaret Wycherly reprised her role of the "quaint old fortuneteller" from the successful stage play, but in the transformation of The Thirteenth Chair to film, "the crime has been shifted to another character."
       A reviewer in the 24 August 1929 Hollywood Filmograph, after seeing a preview at the Belmont Theatre at 126 South Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles, called the film "a conglomeration of screeches, seances, murders and investigation, none too adeptly combined by Tod Browning....Several scenes, as it happens, depend entirely upon sound for their effect. The lights on the settings are turned off and the screen is a glimmering grayness. One hears shrieks, screams, thuds, and the effect is a sense of uncanniness and irritation, to which the audience did not react favorably."
       The 22 June 1929 Hollywood Filmograph noted that Joel McCrae and Clarence Geldert "have been assigned important roles in The Thirteenth Chair." Geldert appeared in the final flm, but McCrae was not included in the credits.
       The 12 June 1929 Variety mentioned that Tod Browning "invented a vibrating camera" for the film in order to get certain effects, when the M-G-M technical department was unable to give him what he wanted.
       When Conrad Nagel's prominent position in Equity, the actors' union, sparked threats of disfigurement against him, M-G-M provided personal protection while he worked at the studio. One of his antagonists was fellow cast member Charles Quartermain, whom Equity had recently suspended for signing a non-Equity contract with the studio.
       Picture-Play Magazine ran a page of photographs of the seance at the center of the story.
       This was the second filming of Bayard Veiller's play, following a silent 1919 version (see entry). M-G-M remade The Thirteenth Chair in 1937, directed by George B. Seitz and starring Dame May Whitty and Madge Evans (see entry).
       The National Film Preservation Board (NFPB) included this film on its list of Lost U.S. Silent Feature Films as of February 2021.