Sweet Kitty Bellairs was the result of a 1914 pact between Broadway stage producer David Belasco and the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Co. to bring Belasco's successful plays to the pantomime screen, the 8 June 1914 Motion Picture News noted.
       The 9 January 1915 Moving Picture World announced that plans "are now well under way for making" Sweet Kitty Bellairs, but filming didn't begin until the following year. The Belasco play was considerably rewritten to conform to the silent film format.
       The 11 March 1916 Moving Picture World reported that Sweet Kitty Bellairs would be the first production on the "new three hundred foot stage" at Lasky's Hollywood studios at the corner of Vine Street and Selma Avenue. Art director Wilfred Buckland built "a replica of the ballroom at the casino at Bath, the famous English watering place...in the latter part of the eighteenth century," according to the 8 April 1916 Motion Picture News. "More than two hundred people were used in the ballroom scenes, and the costumes for this were made especially for the Lasky company by Alfreda Hoffman, until recently connected with one of the most celebrated New York costumers."
       According to Wid's, "Some of the exterior locations were particularly well chosen, and separate mention should be made of the fact that in the last reel we have such a conventional happening as the marching of troops along a roadway, made into a truly artist effect, the grouping of the troops on the roadway against a background of clouds making these scenes decidedly distinctive and remarkably artistic."
       Sweet Kitty Bellairs was the first film directed by James Young for the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Co. It was the second film for former Ziegfeld Follies headliner Mae Murray, following To Have and to Hold (1916, see entry). She became known as "The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips."
       The film opened 21 May 1916 at the Strand Theater on Broadway in New York City, according to the 3 June 1916 Moving Picture World.
       New York Clipper incorrectly credited Cecil B. De Mille as the director.
       Sweet Kitty Bellairs was remade by Warner Bros. in 1930, with Alfred E. Green directing and Claudia Dell starring (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.