Items in the 27 Dec 1913 Reel Life and 10 Jan 1914 Motography noted that Paul Armstrong’s The Escape would soon be a “four-part [sic] motion picture,” which would “not only mark the first appearance of Blanche Sweet as a Mutual star, but…also be the first Mutual picture presented under the direction of Mr. [D.W.] Griffith.” According to the 3 Jan 1914 Motion Picture News, Earl Foxe and Spottiswood Aitken were in the cast, but neither were listed in final credits. Other items in 6 Jun 1914 Motion Picture News and 10 Jan 1914 New York Clipper similarly listed the non-credited Jack Pickford and James Cooley as cast members.
       The Escape was filmed at the Reliance Company studio at 29 Union Square, on the corner of Sixteenth Street and Broadway in New York City. A reporter, in the 3 Jan 1914 Moving Picture World, gave this account of a visit: “We wandered to the Sixteenth Street part of the studio. Under lights fiercer than any that ever beat on a throne stood Blanche Sweet and Mae Marsh rehearsing a scene in the forthcoming feature production of Paul Armstrong’s ‘The Escape.’ In the play the two are sisters. Miss Sweet uttered no word. Her lips did not move. She looked. You felt what she was thinking. Miss Marsh, a slip of a girl, looking even younger than she actually is—and she is in the teens—indulged in pantomime. Her lips moved, but she spoke not. A slight cough indicated the tuberculous taint of the character she was portraying. It was all very interesting. For a quarter of an hour we stood by the camera just behind a tall man [Griffith] seated comfortably, a big brown fedora hat pulled over his eyes serving as a shade from the lights. He was talking into a megaphone. It was a mild conversational tone. At times there would be a lull. Then again there would be advice, but the voice was not raised.”
       An article in the 24 Jan 1914 Motography described a reporter’s visit to the set of the senator’s house. In the scene, the senator was portrayed by C. S. Abbey. However, in final credits, Ralph Lewis was listed in the role. Another performer on the set was child actress Runa Hodges, but her role is undetermined.
       The 17 Jan 1914 Motion Picture News reported that director David W. Griffith was shooting alternate, less shocking takes of the film’s most questionable moments: “Several negatives are made of every scene that threatens to be at all questionable, the action being changed in each case, so that the one chosen for final use will be above the criticism of the strictest censor.”
       In his 1973 autobiography, Billy Bitzer, His Story (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Griffith’s cameraman wrote that they “photographed the principal scenes of The Escape” before they began shooting The Battle of the Sexes (1914, see entry) in Dec 1913. That production lasted into Mar 1914, whereupon further filming of The Escape began. This break of several months, reportedly caused by Blanche Sweet’s illness, may explain why some actors who began the film were not in the final cast.
       According to the 11 Dec 1915 NYT, Dr. Daniel Carson Goodman “put together” the prologue. The 20 Jun 1914 Motion Picture News provided more detail, explaining, “The prologue shows various forms of the lowest particles of life: the amoeba, vorticella, and paramecium and their development into larger particles until at last the human body is attained. The prologue goes further and tells us that horses, dogs, pigs and other animals are mated with the greatest care, and that humans, the most advanced beings on the earth, utterly neglect to assure themselves of the health of their mates. The prologue, about one reel in length, was furnished by Dr. Daniel Carson Goodman.” The exact nature of Goodman’s work is unclear from these references. In the same issue of Motion Picture News, reviewer Peter Milne said that Griffith’s film retained the story and many of the scenes from Paul Armstrong’s original Broadway play, but “the minor plot of the play has been converted to the major plot of the picture, and vice versa, which makes the picture of one that furthers the cause of the eugenic marriage.”
       According to contemporary sources, Thomas E. O'Brien was a production assistant for this film. Additional credits from modern sources list James Smith and Rose Richtel as film editors. This film was released late in 1914 to the states' rights market by Western Import Co. According to the 21 Oct 1916 MPSD, Samuel De Vall, a technical director and construction manager, worked on the film.
       Another film adaptation of Paul Armstrong’s play was produced by the Fox Film Corp. in 1928. That film, directed by Richard Rosson, starred William Russell (see entry).