The Woman Who Went Away was a working title, according to an item in the 29 Jan 1921 Motion Picture News. The copyright title is listed as The Uncharted Sea.
       Several contemporary sources incorrectly referred to Uncharted Seas as Unchartered Seas, including the 20 Oct 1920 Wid’s Daily, which announced that Bayard Veiller, director of productions for Metro Pictures Corp., had purchased film rights to John Fleming Wilson’s short story, “The Uncharted Sea.” An 11 Dec 1920 Motion Picture News item announced that Rudolph Valentino would star opposite Alice Lake, with Wesley Ruggles directing. Two days later, the 13 Dec 1920 Wid’s Daily noted that scenarist George Elwood Jenks had completed the script, his first under a new contract with Metro.
       On 18 Dec 1920, Moving Picture World stated that filming was underway, and John Fleming Wilson had already visited set in Los Angeles, CA. A conflicting report in the 1 Jan 1921 Motion Picture News reported that principal photography would begin “within a few days” at Metro’s studio lot in Hollywood, CA. The 25 Dec 1920 Motion Picture News noted that location shooting would take place in “the Arctic regions” in early 1921. While in the North, Ruggles planned to film the Aurora Borealis.
       As stated in a 29 Jan 1921 Motion Picture News brief, seven Alaskan dogs were “imported from the snow country,” and would figure heavily in “the Northern settings for the production.” In addition to Arctic locations, some snowy exteriors were shot near Flagstaff, AZ. According to a 1 Jan 1921 Motion Picture News brief, sets included a reproduction of San Francisco, CA’s Chinatown.
       The 15 Jan 1921 Motion Picture News “Hollywood Hokum” column reported that an actor was under physician’s care after being made to eat sandwiches and glasses of milk “all day long” during a re-shoot. Several weeks later, the 5 Mar 1921 Motion Picture News reported that cast and crew were exhausted after two weeks of “strenuous” shooting in and around Flagstaff. Final scenes would be filmed at Metro studios as soon as the company had time to recuperate. Alice Lake reportedly suffered a sprained ankle and a cold; Ruggles endured a cracked rib “from a fall on the ice”; and others were recovering from various bruises and sprains.
       An item in the 24 Dec 1921 issue of Moving Picture World chided the Goodwin Theatre in Newark, NJ, for advertising the film as Unchartered Seas.