An item in the 17 Jan 1914 Moving Picture World announced that director-actor Phillips Smalley had completed The Merchant of Venice "at the Pacific Coast studios" in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, in what would soon be named Universal City. Universal president Carl Laemmle reportedly encouraged Smalley's depiction of the Jewish “Shylock” character after seeing his performance as a rabbi in a previous film, The Jew’s Christmas (1913). Smalley’s wife, Lois Weber, portrayed the character of “Portia” and wrote the scenario. The studio released the film not as part of its regular “Gold Seal” program but as “a Universal special feature,” scheduled for a late Feb 1914 release.
       The film ran into resistance from censorship boards, particularly over the behavior and character of Shylock. In Chicago, IL, according to the 7 Mar 1914 Moving Picture World, the city censor, Major M. L. C. Funkhouser, convened an audience of local Jewish leaders to watch The Merchant of Venice at the city hall. Rabbi Abram Hirschberger declared that since Shakespeare’s play was greatly “responsible for the creation of a world-wide prejudice against the Jew,” he objected to “any pictures of Shylock being shown to children.” When some scenes were trimmed, Carl Laemmle wrote an open letter to the 18 Feb 1914 Chicago Tribune mocking Funkhouser for cutting up his pictures and asked how long the city aldermen were “going to stand for this stupendous nonsense.”
       The exact nature of Weber’s adaptation of the original play for this film is not known, although the 24 Jan 1914 Moving Picture World declared that the film was “beautifully staged and costumed, well acted, and a remarkably faithful adaptation of Shakespeare’s text.” The 14 Feb 1914 Moving Picture World added, “In making a picture of the play for the average spectator, it is inevitable that the love story, with its broad emotional appeal, should be prominent, and in producing this picture, the Smalleys have fortunately done just this.”
       Vitagraph filmed the first American version of The Merchant of Venice in 1908 (see entry). A two-reel version of the play was released in early 1913 by Thanhouser, while at the same time another two-reel version from Europe was being distributed in the U.S. by Kleine-Eclipse.
       The National Film Preservation Board (NFPB) included this film on its list of Lost U.S. Silent Feature Films as of October 2019.