 Beban only agreed to join the project for a salary of $7000 and a percentage of the films profits.Ince and Sullivan are credited with writing the film's story, but film historian Kevin Brownlow has shown that the plot was essentially lifted from the earlier Independent Moving Pictures (Ince's former employer) film "The Wop" (1913).Though set on Manhattan's Lower East Side, the New York scenes for "The Italian" were shot in the immigrant quarter of San Francisco.