Newsreel footage from World War II is included in the film.
       Which Way to the Front? marked the only credited feature film appearance of Los Angeles Dodgers baseball player Willie Davis. It also marked the feature film debut of producer-director Jerry Lewis’s son, Ron Lewis, according to the 15 Jan 1970 DV.
       Items in the 10 Jan 1968 Var and 15 Mar 1968 DV stated that Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, Inc., had purchased Which Way to the Front?, an original screenplay by Lester Colodny and Richard Bakalyan. A year later, the 26 Feb 1969 Var announced that Jerry Lewis would direct and produce, from a screenplay by Gerald Gardner and Dee Caruso, based on Colodny and Bakalyan’s original treatment.
       Principal photography began 1 Dec 1969 at the Warner Bros. studio lot in Burbank, CA. On 16 Dec 1969, DV reported that three days of location shooting at Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, England, were scheduled to begin that day. Soon after, the 5 Jan 1970 DV noted that a National Education Television special about Lewis would begin filming 12 Jan 1970 on the Warner Bros. set.
       The picture opened on 22 Jul 1970 to largely negative reviews. Lewis’s next directorial effort, The Day the Clown Cried, was shelved, and his subsequent production, Hardly Working, was released in 1981 (see entry). In an 8 Apr 1981 interview published in the Boston Globe, Lewis addressed his absence from filmmaking in the decade following Which Way to the Front?, stating, “When I saw Which Way to the Front? double-billed with [the pornographic film] Deep Throat in Encino, I could see the way the movie business was going…For 20 years parents had been sending their children to my movies with the assurances of clean entertainment. Now the industry was going for filth, and I wanted no part of it.”
       DV and Var items published Dec 1969--Jan 1970 listed the following as cast members: Damian London; Walter Kray; Norman Leavitt; William O’Connell; Robert Carson; Henry Corden; Robert Carricort; Gil Stuart ; Vincent Van Lynn; Henry Slate; Karl Lucas; Roy Gleason; Frank Mitchell; John Nolan; Joe Scott; Maurice Kelly; Nicky Blair; Sandy Devore; and Bob Harvey, who also served as Lewis’s assistant on the film.