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Having suffered from the transition to sound (barking hadn't added much to his vehicles) , Rin Tin Tin and owner Lee Duncan reportedly signed with Mascot producer Nat Levine for a flat fee of 5,000 dollars. The Lone Defender's negative cost was in the vicinity of 40,000 dollars, so Levine, who had borrowed the Powers Cinephone Sound equipment from Walt Disney, certainly got his money's worth. The casting of June Marlowe as a teenager was a bit suspect, but Marlowe had appeared with the dog on previous occasions and was apparently comfortable being upstaged by both children (she was Our Gang's beloved Miss Crabtree) and animals. Sold on the States' Rights market as a "talkie" (or should it be "barkie"?), The Silent Defender has long drawn out silent sequences interspersed with stilted dialogue. It was packaged solely for children -- who didn't care about sound one way or another -- and made a mint for Levine's burgeoning Mascot Pictures. The Lone Defender was re-released as a six-reel feature film in 1934.