In his 1982 book "Howard Hawks, Storyteller", Gerald Mast says that the 133-minute version is Hawks' preferred cut and goes into some detail explaining this. In his essay on the film for the Library of Congress' National Film Registry, filmmaker/historian Michael Schlesinger believes that the shortened version was prepared for overseas distribution, as it is easier to replace narration than printed text. He says that the sole source of Hawks' preference for the shorter version was an interview he gave to Peter Bogdanovich near the end of his life, when the director, already prone to spinning tales and changing his opinions, may have simply been confused.