In 1937 Basil Rathbone and Ann Harding appeared in Rowland B. Lee's movie version of LOVE FROM A STRANGER. Imagine my surprise to discover that in 1938 (just a year later) BBC television did this version of the story starring Edna Best in the Ann Harding role, and Bernard Lee (Sean Connery's future "M") as the serial wife killer played by Rathbone. There were obvious differences - one is that Rathbone's killer was GERALD LOVELL and Lee's is BRUCE LOVELL.
It's rare to find anything that Lee did where he was a villain. Besides "M" in the James Bond films, he was Trevor Howard's western - reading, and unlucky aide in THE THIRD MAN, and the detective who arrests Robert Morley, Peter Lorre, and the other crooks in BEAT THE DEVIL. It would have been odd to see him playing a calculating wife killer. As for Edna Best, who already played a sharpshooting mother in the original MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, she would have a few more years of movie stardom. I really wonder how this version would have stacked up against the 1937 and 1947 movie versions.
