The 20 December 1925 Film Daily noted that Monta Bell's next movie would be an adaptation of The Book of Charm, a play by John Alexander Kirkpatrick, which ran at Broadway’s Comedy Theatre from September to October 1925, under the direction of pioneering female stage producer-director Rachel Crothers. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. (M-G-M) paid $20,000 for the film rights, according to a 25 November 1925 Variety brief, which described the stage production as “flopping.” Although Variety initially referred to the planned film version as Charm, the title was changed to The Boy Friend by mid-March 1926. The 14 August 1926 Exhibitors Herald incorrectly referred to it as Her Boy Friend.
       An item in the 11 March 1926 Film Daily stated that actresses Elizabeth Patterson and Maidel Turner, who had appeared in the stage version, traveled to MGM’s studio in Culver City, CA, to act in the film (possibly reprising their original roles). Two days later, the 13 March 1926 Los Angeles Times indicated that production was underway. Ernest Gillen (a.k.a. Donald Reed) and Walter Tennyson were named as cast members in the 27 March 1926 and 10 April 1926 issues of Motion Picture News. Tennyson was cast in the role of “Lester White,” according to the 3 April 1926 Los Angeles Evening Citizen News. However, the casting of Ward Crane in that role was announced four days later in the [Los Angeles, CA] Daily News. The conclusion of principal photography was announced in the 1 May 1926 Exhibitors Herald.
       An article in the 8 May 1926 Motion Picture News listed The Boy Friend among MGM’s “All Star Pictures” for the coming season. Theatrical release was initially scheduled to take place on 31 October 1926. However, the film opened the week of 31 July 1926 in Chicago, IL, and on 14 August 1926 in New York City, as noted in the 31 July 1926 Chicago Tribune and 9 August 1926 Film Daily, respectively. Other regional openings, including the 5 August 1926 release in Champaign, IL, occurred around the same time.
       While an 11 August 1926 Variety brief claimed that the “picture drew fine notices” in Chicago, the 25 August 1926 issue ran a negative review of the film, lamenting that the play did not translate well to the screen. Noting that the story centered around characters and ideas as opposed to action and plot, Variety claimed the picture relied too heavily on titles to get the story across.
       In the wake of this film’s production, lead actress Marceline Day sought to break a five-year contract with M-G-M, which she had signed in late 1925 when she was a seventeen-year-old minor. An article in the 12 May 1926 Variety noted that the now eighteen-year-old actress and her mother alleged that M-G-M had initially allowed her to seek jobs at other studios, but after she received good publicity on other pictures, M-G-M forced her to return to the studio and appear in The Boy Friend, The Gay Deceiver (then referred to as Toto), and other films at a lesser salary than she had been offered on outside projects. Day had since declared that she would not be held to a contract made when she was a minor, while M-G-M executive Irving Thalberg asserted that the studio would hold the actress to her contractual obligations and use legal means to prevent her from working at other studios.
       Another film titled The Boy Friend, possibly a short, was in production around the same time with Donald Kerr, “Tiny Tim,” and Billy Halligan, under the direction of Brian Foy, as noted in the 11 April 1926 Film Daily.
       The National Film Preservation Board (NFPB) included this film on its list of Lost U.S. Silent Feature Films as of October 2019.