Some sources reported the film's title as Grass: The Epic of a Lost Tribe. The opening production cast credits read: "Recorded for the screen by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack with Marguerite Harrison. Edited and Titled by Terry Ramsaye and Richard P. Carver." The film commences with inter-title cards, explaining that history has been a westward movement from Asia and that secrets of our past still reside with The Forgotten People in the East. Inter-titles then introduce the three filmmakers, who “sought and found The Forgotten People.” Although the NYT review reported that only Harrison was seen onscreen, Cooper and Schoedsack are also shown at the beginning in three brief film clips: Cooper is shown smoking a pipe, and an inter-title cards reads: “the explorer who conceived the idea of recording the migration.” Next Cooper is shown with Schoedsack, and the accompanying inter-title card reads: “whose camera recorded this epic experience.” Lastly, Harrison is shown, and an inter-title card describes her as an “author and traveler whose part in the search appears here.”
       Cooper and Schoedsack remain behind the camera for the rest of the film, although Harrison appears several times, interacting with the natives throughout the picture. Large area maps showing the course of the journey are shown periodically in the film. The signed affidavit that appears near the end of the film is a photograph of an original Arabic document, and is followed by a photograph of a typed English transcription. The document was signed by “Haidar Khan, Chief of the Baba Athmade Tribe of the Haktyari,” who is seen in the film, and by “Amir Jang, Prince of the Haktyari.” As mentioned onscreen, Robert W. Imbrie, Vice-Consul of the United States, witnessed the signing on 28 Jun 1924 in Teheran. Inter-titles mention that it was the last document witnessed by Imbrie, who died soon after. As noted in the NYT review, Imbrie was slain in Teheran on 18 Jul 1924.
       Grass marked the debut of Cooper (1893—1973), who was inspired to make the documentary following the success of Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North (1922, see entry). It was also the first collaboration of Cooper and cinematographer Schoedsack (1893—1979), who, according to Schoedsack in a Feb 1983 AmCin article, met in 1918 during World War I. According to a 14 Oct 1935 Time article, Harrison (1879—1967) was the daughter of a wealthy Baltimore businessman. When she was widowed after several years of marriage, a debt of $70,000 in medical bills prompted her to take on several careers, eventually writing for newspapers and working as a war correspondent. She was imprisoned twice in Russia for her activities, but released due to her connections, and in 1920, according to modern sources, assisted Cooper when he was taken prisoner in Russia.
       According to the 1983 AmCin, Harrison financed half of the $10,000 production costs of Grass and the other half was borrowed by Cooper from family members. The money purchased equipment, supplies and 20,000 feet of 35mm film. In the article, Schoedsack stated that he and Cooper wanted to make a picture about a nomadic tribe’s struggle against nature and that a British official Cooper met in Bagdad told them about the Bakhtiaris, who were by then preparing to migrate to the high country of their winter quarters. The filmmakers traveled with the Baba Ahmedi tribe of the Bakhtiari nation of Persia. According to production notes written by Harry Q. Mills for a 1938 UCLA screening of the film at which Harrison gave a lecture, the winter quarters of the tribe were in the lowlands near the Persian Gulf, and the tribe’s summer habitat was 350 miles away in mountain valleys near the central Persian plateau.
       The 1983 AmCin stated that the journey of the Bakhtiari began on 17 Apr 1924. Making the picture was a risky venture for the filmmakers, both for their lives and equipment, and they worked in fear of running out of film before reaching their destination. In the article, Schoedsack noted that he carefully calculated his use of film and, by the time they had reached the summer quarters of the Bakhtiari, he had eighty feet left to film an ending to the picture. After parting with the tribe, the filmmakers went to Isfahan, where Cooper cabled editors he knew and raised the money for their return trip to New York via Paris, where they developed the film. Cooper and Schoedsack hoped to return to the tribe to film their journey back to the summer lands, and possibly add a theme to the film about a particular family, but that part of the project never developed.
       Although the completed film was first shown as part of lecture tour given by Cooper, in Jan 1925, Famous Players-Lasky Corp. bought the rights to release it theatrically. The film showed audiences areas of the world that they had never seen, even in photographs. However, as indicated in the Apr 1925 Literary Digest, there was considerable discussion about whether the film would have been better if a romance had been depicted within the story. Cooper wrote a 1925 book about their adventures, also titled Grass. Harrison also wrote of their adventures in her 1935 biography, There’s Always Tomorrow.
       According to modern film historians, Grass and Nanook of the North were the two most significant documentaries of the silent era, created before there were any prescribed standards for the genre, and therefore became the model for later documentaries. According to AmCin, Cooper wanted to produce a remake of Grass in Technicolor. In 1956, he sent a crew to Iran, funded by C. V. Whitney Productions, but that project was never completed.
       Cooper and Schoedsack collaborated on several other films, most significantly, the 1933 RKO Radio Pictures production, King Kong (see entry).
       Fifty years later after the release of Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life, Anthony Howarth and David Koff revisited the Bakhtiari tribe and made the 1976 documentary People of the Wind, which was narrated by British actor James Mason and nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary.