The seventh color feature, the second Technicolor feature, the first color feature made in Hollywood, and the first color feature anywhere that did not require a special projector to be shown.
Believed to have been lost in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Vault fire in 1967, it was discovered and restored in 1985 by the UCLA Film and Television Archive from the original 2-strip camera negatives.
One of the 50 films in the 4-disk boxed DVD set called "Treasures from American Film Archives (2000)", compiled by the National Film Preservation Foundation from 18 American film archives. This film was preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
The film's story is a variation of Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly, which premiered in 1904; except, the film takes place in China and the opera is set in Japan. In turn, the opera was based on an 1898 short story, under the same name, written by John Luther Long. The short story was based on the 1887 semi-autobiographical French novel, Madame Chrysanthème, by Pierre Loti.
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