The Letter

Jeanne Engles is almost a physical ghost here. Everyone seems to be in love her as an actress. Based on this, I'm not that hooked but she definitely does get your attention.

In this movie, the racism out in the open and cuts both ways which is closer to the real world. The movie does well to bring that forward. Unfortunately, here, as usual, Hollywood fell into bizarre caricatures and images when portraying the Chinese.

With Anna May Wong in Europe at the time, Tsen Mei is cast as Li-Ti and only manages to extract a very average presence. It is difficult to imagine her as a love interest. (Tsen Mei went on to run theatres in New Jersey) With Anna May Wong in that role (and advising the directors), the movie would have been elevated considerably and the confrontation-over-the-letter scene likely would have become an all time classic.

Technically, this movie is crude, especially the sound but a restored version might be a different story.

This film has recently been restored to a 35mm print. I was fortunate enough to see it. A great deal is already said here about Jeanne Eagels' performance. The only thing I can add is that Bette Davis seems to not have so much modeled her performance in the remake, as to have modeled her own physical persona in general on Eagels, who has a subtle body twitch that Davis took to (delightful) extremes later on. Certainly Davis would have seen this original movie version, and may have even seen Eagels on stage in other properties.

The sound is very primitive in this early version. At first it seemed like the sound wasn't even working. But the problem is that there is no sound until the film gets to a scene that has dialogue. It would have been interesting to hear more ambient sound added so you would be less likely to notice the old-fashioned audio, but then purists might complain.

Nevertheless, the film is fascinating and so is Eagels. I saw the film with an Asian friend who liked the fact that the film doesn't shirk from racism. The sequence where the heroine delivers the letter to the dragon lady was fun to compare to the later version. The early version is a lot racier! Also, I must point out that Herbert Marshall, who appears in the later version as the heroine's husband, is very young and handsome as her murdered lover in this 1929 production.

I was fortunate to see a rare screening of this (early) 1929 film. The lure for me was Jeanne Eagels, and her performance did not disappoint. Her screen presence is amazing - there is scarcely a performance from this early talkie period to compare it with. If Eagels was alive at the time (she died in October 1929), if Paramount had more clout with the MGM-dominated AMPAS at the time, she surely would have won the Academy Award for Best Actress (it went to Mary Pickford in one of the WORST performances of the period, in the nearly-unwatchable "Coquette"). Her final confrontation with her husband, one of the most dynamic pieces of film acting from ANY period, is alone worth the price of admission.

This film exists only as a work print, without final dubbed-in music and sound effects, which may be disconcerting to some viewers, but thank God Eagels' performance survives intact. The storyline is similar to the 1940 remake but without several plot variations imposed by the Hays Office, and in many ways this earlier film seems more modern, complete with a few profanities and obvious depictions of a brothel (that scene, with Eagels' character humiliated in front of a bevy of Asian prostitutes, is amazing). The casual racism of colonialists on display throughout the film may be off-putting when viewed today, but is historically and dramatically appropriate.

Rights to this film apparently belong to Universal, so the chance of its being distributed on DVD - along with the many wonderful Paramount pre-1934-code films, the brilliantly restored Technicolor "Follow Thru" and "Paramount On Parade", etc. - is slender-to-none. No studio cares less about its pre-1948 catalog, especially the Paramount titles, and we can only pray that whoever heads their video division will be replaced by someone who knows and loves this eminently under-exploited catalog. In the meantime, Run, don't walk if this is screened in your area, and experience this beautiful and vibrant star who influenced a generation of actresses (not the least of which, Bette Davis, who took much from Eagels).

Only currently available through the American Film Institute, which restored the film, this features a remarkable performance by one of the great stage actresses in the early part of the 20th Century.One sees immediately why Ms. Eagels was a star; this is a powerful, emotional tour-de-force which lasts a little over an hour. Little more than a filmed stage play for the most part, this film is a very important re-discovery that deserves to get into better circulation.

Although this version of The Letter that I saw was incomplete lacking the final six minutes, if you have seen the better known Bette Davis version from 1941 then you know what fate awaits Jeanne Eagels in this film. Sad to say this and another sound film are all we have of her acting and stage presence. Eagels was most famous on stage for doing another W. Somerset Maugham work, Rain. After seeing this what a shame it was she died of too much living before doing a film version of that. Joan Crawford was unjustly criticized for essentially not being Jeanne Eagels, so vivid was the memory of what she did on stage with Sadie Thompson.

She doesn't do too bad with Leslie Crosbie either in this film. Eagels is the bored wife of rubber plantation owner Reginald Owen and she casually drifts into an affair with Herbert Marshall. But Marshall has been two timing Eagels with a lovely Asian mistress. After deceiving her husband she's not about to be thrown over for an Oriental so she empties a revolver into Marshall. In the Bette Davis version Marshall plays the wronged husband and the character of the lover is only shown at the beginning being ventilated with six bullets.

Eagels gets the best barrister in Singapore O.P. Heggie, but there is the nasty business of an indiscreet letter she wrote to Marshall that the Chinese woman now has. Therein lies the tale.

Somerset Maugham if anything was more observant of the racism in the British colonial community in this version than the later one. What's driving Eagels is the thought of being tossed aside for an Oriental woman, the type she employs as servants and looks down on. Not to mention the scandal of her affair and what would happen to her position in that strict British white colonial society.

Eagels gives a dynamic performance in her confrontations with the various male characters and in a soliloquy in court where she recounts a version for the jury as to why she killed Marshall. Of course it's all lies and the white jurors want to believe her. But that letter should it get out, she's toast.

Shot in Paramount's Astoria studios, The Letter shows its age, but even as she overacted as most of her Broadway contemporaries did when they faced sound cameras, her dynamism is undeniable. Watch this and you'll why Jeanne Eagels was such a big star.