The Letter (1940)

Yes, it is. You are in for a treat. The final scene is very powerful. The atmosphere is tense and claustrophobic throughout.

Is this a prequel to "A Letter to Three Wives?"

YES!!!

It is. As well as a powerhouse performance by James Stephenson as her lawyer. And Gale Sondergaard is phenomenal.

No Dora r2. It's the one where she writes a letter to Daddy. She realizes his address is heaven above. Since she can't afford the exorbitant postage, she arranges for her sister to deliver it to him in person.

Love this movie. One of Bette's best performances

I loved her hairstyle in this film.

Agree.

Her confession about the man she killed is stunning. Bette nails it.

Still amazed by the actual killing itself. That is some good acting, yo.

Serves him right

Oh puhleeze. She couldn't fly higher than an Eagels.

It is indeed one of Davis' best performances - I would put it in her top three.

I've seen the Jeanne Eagels' version too - very creaky, but her final scene with the husband is riveting, even if she is a bit mannered. At least in this version, the original ending of the story is used since it was pre-Code.

The opening may be my favorite scene in any movie.

Bette's wardrobe in this is the height of 1940 fashion.

LOVED the theme song!

The opening tracking shot going from the oozing rubber trees, the sleeping Burmese (or Malaysian?) workers to Bette shooting her lover is one of the best ever filmed in American cinema. Bette was having an affair with director William Wyler at the time of filming.

[quote]Bette's wardrobe in this is the height of 1940 fashion.

Thank you

Yes the opening where Bette coldly walks down those step and viciously executes her lover so dramatically I'll always remember.Only Bette could have pulled such drama off so well. She was a true DRAMA QUEEN.

r17 that's William Haines.

It was her walk. Besides her eyes Bette had a very distinctive cadence in the way she walked

This clip follows above. Just too good not to post.

I love how she almost looks drugged throughout the movie....and her reactions each time she is caught in a lie or shown evidence is priceless......you can see the character's mind racing while she remains passive and unruffled.

YES certainly one of Bette Davis' best performances.....and she gave a LOT of them. You can feel the heat and sweat in the atmosphere.....

Her performances under Wyler are her best.

Second best performance to me. The Little Foxes was her best.

I must be one of the few who find Davis very over the top and mannered in this movie. ..especially the way she enunciated each T. Also the confession scenes are histrionic and plain cringey now. Stephenson and Marshall give better performances.

Jeanne Eagles is the tops as Leslie.

Yes!

As mentioned, her scenes with James Stephenson are masterful. He died a couple years later, still fairly young.

I think she may have had an affair with Bruce Linley, who plays a young lawyer.

^^^^Bruce Lester. According to James Spada, Davis had an abortion at that time, and Lester was one of 4 possibilities as the father.

That's kind of interesting, because I remember watching the movie and thinking he pinged

Good for Bette if she got a roll in the hay with Bruce Lester - he was one hot guy.

He sure pings in that photo.

He was just British.

Davis and the films ending, are overblown melodrama. Sorry but the film ain't all that. Also throw in the cartoon like performance of Gale Sondegard, unconvincingly playing an Asian woman, and what you have is bad camp that is dated and creaky. Sorry.

She dies at the end

Gale Sondergaard dies.

Not happy with Gale's yellow face performance, it was racist...but this was an excellent performance by Bette. Shocked that Ginger Rogers won Best Actress in the dull KITTY FOYLE. Rogers was a lousy dramatic actress. And they say she became insufferable after her Oscar win.

Yes, it was ridiculous that Bette didn't get the Oscar for this. Ginger Fucking Rogers? I mean, come on!

Bette lost that year because Hollywood was sick of her diva-like ways. While it may seem justified now, her constant demands and complaints were not appreciated back then by most of her colleagues. And she didn't play the Hollywood game. She did very little socializing and PR for her films and for Warners. She was uppity!

Ginger was just the opposite. She was perceived as a true pro who could easily move between the exquisite Astaire/Rogers musicals and hugely popular rom-coms. When she finally played a dramatic role in Kitty Foyle, Hollywood was thrilled to reward her for a decade of outstanding work that was never even nominated (because they were musicals and light comedies). It was her turn!

Martha Scott and Joan Fontaine played mousy good girls, so they couldn't win. Hepburn should have won, but that was a comedy, so that wasn't going to happen.

Why do they always seem to film these movies at night with lots of Venetian blinds shadows? Did purple notpatty tier electric bills?

**did people not pay their electric bills?

Ginger sucked as a dramatic actress. When she wasn't dancing, she was rather unimpressive. Sorta like a modern day Meg Ryan. And she was quite homely in the face - it was large, wide and bulbous...and let's not even get started with the peach fuzz problem she had.

I love the atmosphere of the film. The rubber plantation/hot, steamy nights/wicker and lace settings just give the whole film a unique tone. I can't think of many classic films like that.

Interesting that the actor who played the husband in this version had also played the dead lover in the previous version.

I dont think that playing a dead lover would be all that challenging..

^ Herbert Marshall

I don't think he's dead at the beginning of the film.

"purple notpatty tier electric bills"

Rogers could be a very good dramatic actress. Not great but good. You haven't seen many of her films

[quote]the peach fuzz problem she had

Judy Garland sent her a shaving mug with "Good Luck" imprinted on it when Rogers replaced her in THE BARKLEYS OF BROADWAY...Judy was a gay man underneath all that estrogen.

Bette was a lifelong liberal Democrat, Ginger was a lifelong right-wing Republican cunt.

Ginger was brilliant the following year in The Major and the Minor. She was the #1 female star 1941-42.

Was Herbert Marshall the one with the peg leg or was that George Brent? I never could keep those two straight.

r53, it was Marshall with the peg leg

To those of you who didn't like this movie &/or Davis' performance: what about the opening scene? Brilliant -- cinematography, direction, acting -- best thing I've ever seen in a movie.

Rogers' politics was crap (I blame her wacko mother), but she was a wonderful comic actress ("Minor" is brilliant) and could be good in drama. "Primrose Path" is terrific, directed by La Cava, a few years after "Stage Door." But by the mid 40s, a kind of grande dame stodginess started, when she was only in her mid 30s

R47, in the Davis version, the lover is shot at the start of the film, after the great traveling shot. He has no dialogue. Maybe the Eagles version was different in that regard.

By the way, does anyone else find the lawyer (Stephenson) to be hot? Something about those cheekbones. You just know he'd be very masterful.

"Maybe the Eagles version was different in that regard."

Wooo hooo witchy woman see how

High she flies

Woo hoo witchy woman she got

The moon in her eye....

There's a semi remake called "The Unfaithful," with Ann Sheridan. Set in 1947 LA, with good locations. Sheridan is excellent.

[quote]Davis and the films ending, are overblown melodrama.

Isn't melodrama supposed to be overblown? Otherwise it's just, you know, [italic]drama.[/italic]

Is there a scene from The Letter in the 1950s Kim Novak bio-pic Jeanne Eagles? I seem to remember that but maybe it's a scene from Rain?

It's Rain.

Oh. GAWD! RAIN!

Has no one seen the 1982 tv remake with Lee Remick - she is brilliant, capturing the woman's duplicity and ability to lure and trick men perfectly. Much more attractive than Bette too ...

I was just going to post asking about Remick's version r64.

Is that Ian McShane?

Miss Eagels had NOTHING on me. I, too, played both Leslie Crosbie AND Sadie Thompson.

I find the problem with the Davis and Wyler films is that her scenes feel like take 25, since we know he made her do them over and over again.

Rogers is also very good in that surprisingly depressing 40s film where she kills a man who tried to rape her and then returns home after serving her jail sentence.

Not a lot of laughs in that one. I think Byington and Cotton are in it. Kind of noirish.

^ I'll Be Seeing You (1944).

Oh darlings, there's only one The Letter........

"I'll Be Seeing You" has some effective scenes of a soldier experiencing a PTSD flashback. By the way, Cotten co-starred with Davis in the great "Beyond The Forest."

Is the song I'll Be Seeing You from this film or did it already exist?

I always found it humorous that in the film Bette has just killed a man who was trying to rape her yet she still has to make breakfast for everyone since the cook ran off.

"Much more attractive than Bette too ..."

Why does that matter? The character isn't supposed to be beautiful, read the original Maugham story.

R73, the song was from 1938, and had a particular "resonance" for wartime listeners ("I'll be looking at the moon but I'll be seeing you. ").

It was later something of a theme song for Liberace!

The young Chinese clerk in the law office is played by Victor Sen Yung, who also played Hop Sing the cook on Bonanza

He was terrific I loved it when his smile slipped into contempt. And the moment when his car was revealed.

The film was amazing. The scenes between Bette and James Stephenson are electric. And both Gale Sondergaard and Victor Sen Yung were absolutely superb. That opening sequence is one of the best I've ever seen. I bought a copy of David Thomson's book "Moments That Made the Movies" yesterday, and he singles out that sequence as one of the defining moments of cinema:

[quote]We cut to a medium shot of the veranda steps and as we see or feel the man dropping out of sight, so the camera fixes on the figure of Leslie, advancing with implacable purpose, so as to be close enough to this man to keep hitting him with bullets. She wears a long dark dressing gown with flowing sleeves. She is composed, but fluent, as if liberated. And the camera adores her, looking up at her fierce compassionless face as she fires all six shots. The revolver clicks again - she would have kept firing forever perhaps...

[quote]That is when we get Bette Davis - resplendent yet eroded, as ravaged as she is attractive, as tragic as she is nasty, her small pinched face quivering with tormented need. Bette Davis was a remarkable star, a very daring one, in that she hardly ever wasted time trying to be beautiful. Yet for decades, on-screen, she was an emblem of thwarted passion - she played romantically demanding women or tyrants, and it shows here. So we know straightaway, and we know it in that the man remains faceless, that her soon-to-be instruction to the servants that an "accident" has occurred, is not to be believed. We know already that this is not the kind of movie in which accident can ever stand up to destiny. Leslie Crosbie is dangerous and selfish, and she would have been the same in South Kensington as she is outside Singapore.

He also points out that the bucket of dripping rubber in that opening sequence is obviously referring to semen. The scene has everything! Every element the film is remarkable, though. I especially love Orry-Kelly's gowns for Bette and Max Steiner's score. Thanks for all the replies. It's fascinating to read them after finally having seen the film. x

Gale was 5' 6 tall and Bette was 5'3. Having Gale standing on a step over Bette in the scene where Mrs. Hammond hands over the letter to Leslie increased the height difference and the intimidation factor.

Anyone else think Stephenson is sexy?

r80 She's absolutely terrifying in the film. I was just reading that her Hollywood career effectively came to an end after she supported her husband in the House Un-American witch-hunts

Has anyone here read Somerset Maugham's novel, or is it a short story? How does it compare to the film?

This thread makes me want to rewatch the film and seek out the source material.

Was Anna Mae Wong sought for Mrs. Hammond? She would have been the right age and the appropriate ethnicity. Was she considered much of an actress?

It was originally a short story which SM then dramatized as a play. It was supposedly based on a real life incident.

Several significant plot changes were made to satisfy the Hollywood "code".

Never saw the 1929 (pre-code) version so not sure how it compares with Bette's film

[quote]I was just going to post asking about Remick's version

I LOVE Lee Remick but this was Bette's role--as many of her performances were. She's a HARD act to follow. But it can be done. There are certain roles that are OWNED by an artist and one cannot imagine anyone else playing them. I thought NO ONE could ever play Lena Younger any better than Claudia McNeil in a "Raisin In the Sun" but then Phylicia Rashad came along and wasn't bad. She was not bad at all! Anyway... I love ya, Lee but you didn't score here.

[quote]"Much more attractive than Bette too ..." Why does that matter? The character isn't supposed to be beautiful, read the original Maugham story.

I agree! Although beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Davis' "unhollywood look" makes the story even more believable.

The 1929 version is available on Warner Archive. It's a technically clunky early sound film (made at the Astoria studio in Queens!), but it's very different in that Eagels takes the stand (unlike Davis), and she chews the scenery, with a pretty good "cut glawss" accent, like she's desperate for a heroin fix when the take was wrapped. Which she was.

Here's a still of Gale and Bette for the film, though they had no scene like this.

Funny you should mention her r83. We were just discussing her the other day......

I love the way Gale makes Bette bend down to get the letter.

Melodrama doesn't get better than this..

That ending is wonderful too. The moonlight shining through the window blinds. The slow walk outside as Bette goes looking for what she fears is out there. The reveal of the assassins lurking. The breakaway from the actual deed and the camera panning out and over the wall as the sinister music turns into a lively dance number.

Blood curdling and brilliant.

"Anna May Wong...the appropriate ethnicity"

That wasn't a big concern back then about authenticity--i.e., Katharine Hepburn as a Chinese peasant in "Dragon Seed."

Also, Wong had been a big star and may have been at a point where she would have been unwilling to take a wordless role.

Well, Gale Sondergaard was an Oscar winner, actually the first for Supporting Actress in 1936's Anthony Adverse, but work is work.

So glad someone mentioned Kate Hepburn's awful yellowface acting in DRAGON SEED. No one ever, ever called her arrogant ass on that. At least Mickey Rooney apologized for his yellowface in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S.

r76 is entirely right in his comments on the song "I'll Be Seeing You." I'll add that the melody is taken almost note for note from a theme in the third movement of Mahler's Third Symphony, written in the 1890s.

I'll drink to that! And one for Mahler!

Kate in Dragon Seed was hilarous. She was playing a Chinese peasant, but was still doing the "Katharine Hepburn" accent and mannerisms. It was a riot.

The late Robert Osborne discusses yellowface with author of book on Asians in Hollywood.

Anna May Wong really wanted the role of O-Lan, in The Good Earth. Good old MGM thought she was too Chinese!

I can't imagine what Hepburn was thinking accepting that role in Dragonseed!

Not only Chinese but peasant Chinese! Well, at least she got to wear trousers throughout the film.

Bette Davis is terrific in "The Letter" -- one of her finest performances. The Jeanne Eagels version is technically clunky due to its age (as has been posted upthread) but Eagels is outstanding, especially in the final scene.

On my DVD copy of the film one of the special features is an "alternate ending", but it's almost identical to the actual ending, apart from a couple of subtle differences. The biggest difference, I think, is the absence of the final scene between Bette and Herbert Marshall, where she says she still loves the man she killed.

This is my favorite Bette Davis film (I also like the 1920's original). Bette was excellent as usual (especially in her confession scene) but I'm glad to see so many positive comments about the outstanding performances of James Stephenson and Gale Sondergaard--they are a huge part of the reason why I love this movie so much.

"Bette lost that year because Hollywood was sick of her diva-like ways."

No, she lost because she had already won twice (in 1935 for DANGROUS and in 1938 for JEZEBEL) and the Academy didn't feel the need to award her a third time so soon.

"Maybe the Eagles version was different in that regard."

It is. The 1929 film includes an extended scene between Eagels and Marshall (playing the lover this time) before she shoots him. Most of the 1941 LETTER is about what happens after the shooting and before the trial, but the 1929 version has only a small piece of the aftermath and goes right to the trial and then the finale where her husband tells her he'll never let her go followed by her telling him off (the best scene in the movie). The 1929 version kept the story's original ending, while the 1941 version had to bend to the dictates of the Hays Code.

"Is there a scene from The Letter in the 1950s Kim Novak bio-pic Jeanne Eagles? I seem to remember that but maybe it's a scene from Rain? "

Oh God, that film is so awful. Novak was so far over her head in that - she's just hopeless. However, I'm pretty sure the scene you're referring to was from RAIN, not THE LETTER (I've tried to push this POS movie out of my head). Not that Novak could handle either one.

How odd that there was enough interest in the mid-1950s in Jeanne Eagels and that Harry Cohn and Columbia thought Kim Novak should play her!

Also odd r104 that in the mid-1960s that anyone thought there'd be interest in Gertrude Lawrence.....

A major contribution to The Letter is the performance of Max Steiner.

R103, I think it's "Rain." The movie is kind of entertainingly awful. Agnes Moorhead in declamatory mode. I like that bizarre ending where hunky Jeff Chandler is watching the image of Eagels on screen, as she sings " I'll Take Romance," which Eagels never did.

[quote]Anna May Wong really wanted the role of O-Lan, in The Good Earth. Good old MGM thought she was too Chinese!

She was all WONG for the part!!!

How odd anybody thought there be any interest in the swinging 60s in Fanny Brace who was a contemporary of Lawrence and didn't live much longer.

Lawrence also created several iconic roles and Brice none.

I wouldn't doubt that Fanny Brice reached an audience 10 times the size of Gertrude's in her"Baby Snooks" character.

Funny Girl began to be planned around 1961, several years before the 1960s swung and anyone had ever heard of Barbra Streisand. There were still millions of Brice fans alive who remembered her well.

Star!, on the other hand, was created as a project specifically for Julie Andrews, who some thought (mistakenly) had similar qualities to Lawrence. It opened in 1968, on the wrong side of truly one of the most transitional years in American cultural history.

FUNNY GIRL was a hit show on Broadway and Streisand was in her ascendance as a major star, so it's no surprise that the film was successful, even among people who had no idea who Fanny Brice was. The draw was Streisand and the film got good reviews, despite the fact that the second half of the film is weak other than the musical numbers.

STAR! on the other hand, was an original film musical with Julie Andrews playing against the type of character that made her popular, and she was badly miscast. The film got a critical drubbing when it arrived, and deservedly so. No surprise it was a flop.

JEANNE EAGELS was built around Novak - who at the height of her inexplicable (IMO) stardom - and marketed as a romantic film with a tragic heroine, so the fact that few people knew who Eagels was in 1957 was beside the point.

R20 You're right about the walk. Susan Sarandon's Bette Davis was inexcusably poor, but she DID at least embody some of her body language, even if it was caricature.

The Letter, The Little Foxes, All About Eve, Whales of August...Davis was a magnificent actor and screen presence. Whether she did stylized melodrama (early) or more realistic acting (later), she always internalized her characters' experiences and channeled them. That's what Crawford was usually lacking. And I think that's what Feud really got right, although it was relentless about driving the point: Joan Crawford was too self-aware/self-conscious/vain to be a really great actress, and Davis was all in.

Much of the film audience of 1957 were in their 50s, and old enough to remember Jeanne Eagels at the height of her fame. Her name still meant something.

Jesus-Fanny Brice. How did it come up Brace.

Most of the film audiences were in their 50s? How in the world did you come up with that?

Ugh! Sorry, sloppy writing on my part.

I meant to say: Much of the film audience that was in their 50s (a sizeable portion) in 1957 would have been old enough to remember Jeanne Eagels.

Well........maybe not so sizeable :)

The DL, where EVERY thread turns into a FUNNY GIRL thread!

R118 FTW

He tried to make love to me and I shot him

The only thing I can say about James Stephenson is that he was suspicious. Of Leslie’s story right from the beginning