An ad in the 9 June 1928 Film Spectator announced that James A. Creelman was adapting The Charlatan, a "Universal-Special" for director Paul Fejos. However, both Fejos and Creelman were assigned to another film, The Last Performance, the September 1928 Motion Picture Magazine revealed. Universal may have been several months premature, because according to the 31 October 1928 Exhibitors Daily Review, Universal had only "just bought" the rights to Ernest Pascal and Leonard Praskins' popular Broadway play. The change may have been that the earlier rights were for the play but not the "dialogue," because as the 5 January 1929 Exhibitors Herald-World pointed out, Universal bought the play for German actor Conrad Veidt, who was known for his bizarre characters in such films as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and, more recently, Universal's The Man Who Laughed (1928, see entry). Veidt, however, went instead with director Fejos to The Last Performance. As explained in the 5 December 1928 Variety, Universal signed Holmes Herbert as soon as it determined that The Charlatan would be a dialogue film instead of a silent, because Herbert had "already scored in a number of talking films." Veidt, a German, could memorize lines without an accent, but "had little or no talking picture experience."
       Other names initially scheduled for The Charlatan were John George, Lilyan Tashman, and Bud Marshall , but none of these actors was credited in the final film.
       According to the Sunday, 25 November 1928 Film Daily, The Charlatan would go into production at Universal City "next Monday under direction of George Melford." The 5 January 1929 Exhibitors Herald-Weekly reported that Melford "took the final shots on this production last week."
       A personal ad for Universal director Jacques Rollens in the 31 March 1929 Film Daily gave him credit for writing and directing the "dialogue version" of The Charlatan; elsewhere in the same issue, an item reported that he had "recently" written and directed the dialogue sequences. The 20 February 1929 Variety identified the actors he directed in the sound sequences as Rockcliffe Fellowes, Margaret Livingston, Holmes Herbert, Philo McCullough, Rose Taplay, and Fred Mackaye.
       The synchronized The Charlatan opened on Broadway in New York City at the Colony Theatre on 13 April 1929, the 17 April 1929 Variety reported. According to the Variety review in the same issue, only fifteen minutes of The Charlatan contained dialogue, mostly "when the climax approaches....It works out well enough here. The elaborate explanation required for the story would have been cumbersome in talk. It's heavy enough silent." Still, said Variety, "Dialogue is uneven, ranging from adequate to pretty terrible." The 21 April 1929 Film Daily called the picture a "Part-Talker," citing a 6,506-feet length for the "synch" version and 5,972 feet for the silent version. Harrison's Reports gave a length of 6,097 feet for the synchronized version, as well as a 7 April 1929 release date.
       According to the Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Survival Database, only one reel of the silent version of this film is extant.