"The Letter" Review

 

by Daniel White

"Your whole life was just wrapped up in rubber!"

As a keen admirer of Bette Davis's restrained performance in William Wyler's excellent 1940 film, The Letter, I approached the 1929 original with low expectations. It's a good thing I did, for it's a clunky mess. However, even clunky messes have their merits, and if only for the chance to see the legendary Jeanne Eagels in action, it's worth catching. Not that Eagels is very good (she's isn't), but I suspect if she'd been given a better production to emote in, she may have risen to the occasion. Or maybe not. By the time the tragic Broadway star made this murky melodrama, she was past her prime, soon to be dead from the alcohol and drugs upon which she'd become dependent.

Set in Singapore, Eagels stars as Leslie Crosbie, the unfaithful wife of a rubber plantation owner (Reginald Owen). Rejected by her lover (Herbert Marshall), who's taken up with a local Chinese gal, Leslie loses it, pumping a whole bunch of bullets into his hide. Claiming self defense, it looks like Leslie's going to get away with it, until a letter she wrote to her flame inconveniently turns up. Uh oh, white lady in big trouble.

A stagey, talky bore, director Jean de Limur has more or less turned the camera on and let it whir, forcing our actors to do all the work. The bird-like Eagels gallantly attempts to draw us in, but she looks distracted and wan. Only Herbert Marshall as the ill-fated love interest manages to avoid being completely defeated by the technical deficiencies of the flick (he would go on to play the husband in the 1940 remake).

There are some interesting departures from the Wyler/Davis classic worth noting. The dramatic showdown between Leslie and her lover's bitter lady friend is handled quite differently. In the remake, the two rivals dramatically face each other alone. Here, Leslie's humiliation is witnessed by a group of Asian women, who gawk and guffaw at her shaming by her nemesis. In another striking departure from the original, Leslie is not punished for her transgression (this is Pre-Code, after all). Instead of having to answer for the murder of Geoffrey Hammond (Marshall), she must remain in Singapore, trapped in a loveless marriage. In some ways, a much more dire outcome for the wayward woman.

Jeanne Eagels received a posthumous Academy Award nomination for her work in The Letter (the first performer to do so, and to date, the only woman). She achieved immortality portraying Sadie Thompson on the stage. I wish she had been better served here.

With Lady Tsen Mei as Li-Ti, Leslie's female foe (unlike Gale Sondergaard in the remake, she is of (partial) Asian descent), and distributed by Paramount Pictures, The Letter is currently available on YouTube.