The Letter (1929)

The Letter
Directed by Jean de Limur
Written by Monta Bell and Jean de Limur from a stage play by W. Somerset Maugham
1929/US
Paramount Pictures
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube

Howard Joyce: Damn clever, these Chinese.

The original adaptation of the Somerset Maugham story has many pleasures and makes an interesting contrast to the 1940 version with Bette Davis. Jeanne Eagels is a revelation.

If you have seen The Letter (1940), you already know the plot.  Leslie Crosbie (Eagels) is the wife of a rubber plantation manager (Reginald Owen) living in Malaysia.  She is bored with this existence.  She is also vain, selfish and vidictive.  She has been having a long term affair with Geoffrey Hammond (Herbert Marshall).   One night when her husband is out of town she writes a letter begging Geoffrey to come to her.  He is now living with a Chinese “half-caste” woman and wants to break it off with her.  So she shoots him.  This happens in maybe the first five minutes of the film.

Leslie is put on trial for her life.  She claims Geoffrey made advances on her and forced her to defend herself.  Things seem to be going in her favor.  Then the letter she wrote on the night of the murder surfaces, complicating Leslie’s life enormously.

Eagel’s take on her character is far less sympathetic than Davis’s.  Nevertheless, they are two great performances by accomplished actresses.  This movie is only 65 minutes long – it was lost for years – but manages to convey the whole story.  It leaves out a lot of the nuance contained in the later film.

Eagels, who had sad and eventful life, was nominated for the first posthumous Academy Award.  She died of a drug overdose shortly after the film was released.  The Letter was the American film debut of both Marshall and Owen.  Herbert Marshall, who plays the lover here, played the husband in the 1940 version.