Helen Hayes was reportedly so appalled by her performance that she tried to buy the movie from the studio so that she could destroy it.
According to 'When the Lion Roars,' Irving Thalberg and his producers were previewing films one night, and he asked to see this one. Told it was hopeless, he asked to put it on anyway. After watching it, he remarked that it wasn't bad; the main thing to do was change the last seven minutes. Retakes were done, and Helen Hayes went on to win the Oscar® for the part.
Before writer Charles MacArthur was assigned to the project, he saw a preliminary script and protested to MGM studio head Irving Thalberg that the play "The Lullaby" was hopelessly old-fashioned and wouldn't be a good film debut for his wife, Helen Hayes. Thalberg heard him out and told him, "You don't like it - you're a writer. You fix it," and hired MacArthur to do the script.
After the film flopped badly on its first preview, Irving Thalberg ordered it back into production and had about one-third of the film re-shot. Since Helen Hayes was already making her second film, Arrowsmith (1931), she was called back to work on the "Claudet" retakes during her only times off from shooting "Arrowsmith", Saturday afternoons and Sundays. When Samuel Goldwyn, the producer of Arrowsmith (1931), heard that Hayes was working seven days a week and making two films simultaneously, he insisted that Hayes stop doing "Claudet" retakes until "Arrowsmith" was finished.