THE LETTER. Paramount, 1929. Jeanne Eagels, O. P. Heggie, Reginald Owen, Herbert Marshall, Irene Brown, Lady Tsen Mei, Tamaki Yoshiwara, Kenneth Thomson. Producer: Monta Bell; director: Jean de Limur. Adaptation: Garrett Fort, with dialogue by de Limur and Bell, based on the play by W. Somerset Maugham. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

   Jeanne Eagels (1890-1929), a renowned stage actress of the 1920s (she appeared with great success in the stage version of Maugham’s Rain), made films for Thanhouser and World Pictures in 1916-1917 (one of the Thanhouser films, The Woman and the World, is available on DVD) and for MGM in 1927, but of the two sound films she made for Paramount, only The Letter is known to survive.

   The print is somewhat rough, with the early sound technology (between the dialogue and sound effects, accompanied by strong background “noise,” the sound drops out completely) initially distracting until the ear adjusts.

   In spite of this, the fragile beauty of Eagels (only 39 when she died of an apparent drug overdose and advanced alcoholism) and her vulnerable but compelling portrayal of the woman who betrays her husband and murders her lover make this a haunting film that largely overcomes its technical shortcomings.

   Herbert Marshall (seen above), who would play the deluded husband in the 1939 version directed by William Wyler and starring Bette Davis, here plays the lover whom Leslie (Eagels) shoots when he confesses that he’s in a relationship with a Chinese woman and that he no longer cares for his high-class, British lover.

   This version departs significantly from the Wyler film, and fellow Cinecon attendee John Apostolou confirmed (after an overnight reading of the original novella on which the play and films are based) that de Limur and Bell have largely followed Maugham’s concept.

   Gale Sondergaard was memorable as the Chinese lover Li-Ti in 1939, but the casting of an accomplished Chinese actress (Lady Tsen Mei) in the role leads to an equally memorable performance.

   In addition, the absence of a moral code in 1929 allowed the inclusion of a scene in Li-Ti’s gambling, drug and prostitution establishment that confronts Leslie with a cage filled with women of “pleasure” that highlights the immoral nature of of the Caucasian woman’s transgressions.

   Also, in 1939, Leslie, freed by the courts, was killed in a punishment that society could not impose. Here, she is condemned to remain in a loveless marriage with a man who knows everything about her deceit, in a setting that, like the cage crowded with imprisoned prostitutes, will become her prison.

   Some of the audience felt the film ended too abruptly as Leslie is given her sentence by her unforgiving husband and has little screen time to react to it although that could also be seen as heightening her realization of a life without hope of escape.