Why the two films?

I was still (just) a teenager in 1960 and saw both the Wilde films of that year ("The Trials of Oscar Wilde" (Peter Finch) and "Oscar Wilde" (Robert Morley) within the space of nine days. Both were excellent though I much preferred the former and not only because it was in colour. The Morley version had a West End premiere while Finch's did not.

However, these reminiscences aside, I wondered then - and still do - why it was deemed necessary to produce two essentially identical films on the same topic almost simultaneously. If I remember rightly there seemed to be a race to get them screened. I can only assume that it was because 1960 was the sixtieth anniversary of Wilde's death in Paris (on 30 November) and that two studios wanted to mark that but I do not find that particularly convincing as the fiftieth, seventy fifth and hundreth would have been more appropriate (admittedly the subject matter would probably have been too strong for a 1950 version).

In any case that may not have been the reason for producing two films or, for that matter, even one. I certainly do not recall it being given as such at the time. Does anyone have any information, please?