The film remained in the vault when RKO was acquired by Desilu Productions in December 1957. Desi Arnaz recalled that in his negotiations with RKO's Dan O'Shea, "I had asked him for all the stock footage to be thrown into the deal. I knew there was about a million feet of film Orson Welles had shot in Brazil which had never been seen." The American Film Institute later became interested in locating the footage after learning that Arnaz, a good friend of Welles, had made inquiries in the mid-1960s about printing some of the negative.