In 1941, powerhouse movie studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was set to produce a lavish new film version of Robert Louis Stevenson's iconic 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. MGM was known for its star-studded extravaganzas and this horror film was going to be no different. Because of this legal red tape, Mamoulian's film stayed out of circulation for both screenings and study until prints resurfaced in the mid-1960s, rendering the film effectively lost for almost thirty years. While MGM's tactic did successfully suppress Mamoulian's pre-code masterpiece, which may have helped Fleming's film at the box office, it backfired when it came to its critical reception. In his 1994 book Robert Louis Stevenson: Life, Literature, and the Silver Screen, film historian Scott Allen Nollen called Fleming's film "a pretentious, overlong, and dramatically bankrupt imitation."