The Letter – 1929 - MikePlaces

The life of the star of this movie, Jeanne Eagels, was made into 1957 American biographical film and starred Kim Novak. This is the only reference I had to Eagles until TCM showed this extremely rare print. It’s the only surviving footage of anything she did. The sound is 1929-primitive with sections lacking sound altogether. This scene below comes right at the end, when the wife is confronted by her husband with a letter she had written to her lover the night that she murdered the man in a fit of mad jealously.

Comments from reviews in Amazon: “it makes the Bette Davis version pale by comparison.” As to the story: “. . . an old one–Leslie, the neglected wife of a rubber plantation owner, shoots and kills her long-time lover. He has abandoned her for, all of things, a Chinese woman (remember, this is 1929). Leslie is protected by her status as a white European woman and the wife of a plantation owner. She was merely protecting herself from a mad rapist. All seems well for Leslie until an incriminating letter appears which implicates Leslie in a murder, not an attempted rape as she claims . This is where the real drama begins.”

The Letter - 1929

Background, mostly from Wikipedia:

Directed by Jean de Limur, the story is based on the 1927 play of the same name by W. Somerset Maugham. It was inspired by a real-life scandal involving the wife of the headmaster of a school in Kuala Lumpur who was convicted in a murder trial after shooting dead a male friend in April 1911.

The lead character, Jeanne Eagles, was a former Ziegfeld Girl and went on to greater fame on Broadway and in the emerging medium of sound films. She posthumously was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her 1929 role in The Letter after dying suddenly that year at the age of 39. That nomination was the first posthumous Oscar consideration for any actor, male or female.

In September 1929, Eagels underwent eye surgery at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City. At the time, she was also suffering from breathing problems and neuritis. After a ten-day stay, she returned to her apartment on Park Avenue. On October 3, 1929, Eagels and her secretary walked to the Park Avenue Hospital where Eagels had an appointment. While talking to the doctor, she began having convulsions and died shortly thereafter.[12] The assistant chief medical examiner who performed Eagels’ autopsy concluded that she died of “alcoholic psychosis”.