THE LETTER by Jean de Limur
by Andre Soares
The Letter (1929)
Direction: Jean de Limur. Screenplay: Garrett Fort, from W. Somerset Maugham’s 1927 play. Cast: Jeanne Eagels, O.P. Heggie, Reginald Owen, Herbert Marshall, Irene Browne, Lady Tsen Mei, Tamaki Yoshiwara
CRIME AND NO PUNISHMENT
Those who have seen William Wyler’s masterful 1940 version of Somerset Maugham’s The Letter, and who expect at least a modicum of quality in Jean de Limur’s 1929 version of the story will be greatly disappointed.
Even more static than many of the other talkies made at the dawn of the sound era, The Letter is a long (even at 61 minutes) filmed play with stage-trained actors who, with one exception, don’t know the difference between acting for the camera and acting for a theater audience.
Only Herbert Marshall, an excellent performer who went on to have a lengthy and distinguished film career, manages to underplay. As the soon-to-be-murdered playboy, Marshall exudes such low-key charm that it’s easy to understand why jilted-lover-turned-murderess Leslie Crosbie is so (truly) mad about him. (In the 1940 remake, Marshall plays the role of Leslie’s henpecked husband.)
Low-key, however, is hardly the appropriate manner to describe Jeanne Eagels’s bombastic talkie début. Eagels, a sensation on stage as Sadie Thompson in Maugham’s Rain, acts the part of the adulteress-murderess as if she were playing to the far corners of the gallery.
Her performance is all mannerisms — hand to forehead to show distress, trembling voice to show despair — and no truth. While Bette Davis’s 1940 Leslie is a cool, calculating vixen, Eagels’ is more like a shrill, starving ferret. No wonder her lover dumps her for a more self-controlled Chinese madam. (See synopsis.)
Yet, Jeanne Eagels remains the main reason for watching the 1929 version of The Letter, for her Leslie Crosbie is the only extant talking performance of the legendary stage actress whose tragic life would end with a drug overdose in October of that year.
Stuck on Malayan rubber plantation with her aloof older husband (Reginald Owen), British subject Leslie Crosbie (Jeanne Eagels) finds affection in the person of a lively but womanizing playboy (Herbert Marshall). When he abandons her for a Chinese woman (Lady Tsen Mei), Leslie becomes insanely jealous. During an ugly confrontation, she shoots him dead.
At the ensuing trial, the respectable Mrs. Crosbie is defended by the honorable Mr. Joyce (O.P. Heggie), who’s also a friend of the family. Everything seems to be going well and an acquittal is certain — that is, until the defense is confronted by an incriminating letter Leslie had written to her lover.
The owner of the letter, the Chinese woman, wants 10,000 dollars for it; else, she will hand the evidence to the prosecutor’s office. That would most likely mean the death penalty for Leslie.
Unlike the 1940 remake, this version — made long before the moralistic Production Code became fully enforceable in mid-1934 — retains the original ending.
Notes:
The Letter was filmed at Paramount’s Astoria studios in Queens, NY.
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Paramount released Spanish- and French-language versions of The Letter. Marcelle Romée and Carmen Larrabeiti played Leslie in the French and Spanish versions, respectively. Louis Mercanton and Adelqui Migliar were the respective directors. The are reports of an Italian and a German version.
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Remade in 1940, in 1947 (as The Unfaithful, with Ann Sheridan), and for television in 1982, with Lee Remick. Many other variations of the basic plot have also been filmed.
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For her talking-picture début, Broadway star Jeanne Eagels wanted to reprise her stage success in W. Somerset Maugham’s Rain, but Paramount was unable to acquire the rights because Gloria Swanson had just produced a film version of that play — Sadie Thompson, in 1928. Therefore, studio and star had to settle for another recent Maugham play, The Letter, which had been performed on Broadway by Katharine Cornell.
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Jeanne Eagels was considered for a best actress Academy Award for the period 1928-29. (There were no official nominations that year.) She was the first performer to be posthumously considered (or nominated) for an Oscar. The winner that year was one of the Academy founders, Mary Pickford, playing against type in Coquette.
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Eagels made only two talking pictures, The Letter and Jealousy. Both were 1929 Paramount productions directed by Jean de Limur, a former assistant to Metro’s foremost director of the early 1920s, Rex Ingram. Of the two Eagels talking vehicles, only The Letter survives. Additionally, a few of her sporadic silent-film appearances also exist.
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Jeanne Eagels was also scheduled to star in The Laughing Lady (1929), but had to withdraw due to ill health. She was replaced by Ruth Chatterton. Another role announced for her was that of the ambitious manicurist in The Devil’s Holiday (1930), a part that eventually went to Nancy Carroll. Eagels died of a drug overdose (apparently a suicide) on October 3, 1929.
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Bette Davis starred in the remakes of both The Letter (1940) and Jealousy (as Deception, 1946).
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