The Letter (1929) is an American drama film produced by Paramount Pictures. It was the first full-sound feature shot at Astoria Studios, Queens, New York City. A silent version of the film was also released. It stars the noted stage actress Jeanne Eagels along with O. P. Heggie and was directed by Jean de Limur. The film was adapted by Garrett Fort from the 1927 play The Letter by W. Somerset Maugham. It tells the story of a married woman who kills her lover out of jealousy and is brought to trial.

Plot

Bored and lonely living on her husband's rubber plantation, Leslie Crosbie takes a lover, Geoffrey Hammond. Eventually, however, he tires of her and takes a Chinese mistress, Li-Ti. When Leslie finds out, she insists on seeing him while her husband is away. She tries to rekindle his love, but when he tells her that he prefers Li-Ti to her, she becomes enraged and shoots him repeatedly.

At the murder trial, she perjures herself on the stand, claiming she had little to do with Hammond and that she shot him when he tried to rape her. Everyone sympathizes, but then Li-Ti's emissary provides Joyce, Leslie's attorney, with a copy of the letter in which Leslie begged Hammond to come see her. Li-Ti is ready to sell it for $10,000, provided Leslie herself make the exchange. On Joyce's advice, Leslie agrees. Li-Ti humiliates her, but eventually accepts the money. Leslie is found not guilty.

8 is an anthology film consisting of eight short films centered on the eight Millennium Development Goals.

Topics

Eight directors had "carte blanche" to treat one of the eight topics:

References

External links

The Letter may refer to:

Literature

Theatre

Film

The Letter is an opera by composer Paul Moravec and librettist Terry Teachout. It was commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera and was premiered there on 25 July 2009.

The opera is based on The Letter, a 1927 play adapted by W. Somerset Maugham from one of his short stories. The play has been filmed twice. The first version, called The Letter, was made in 1929 and starred Jeanne Eagels. The better-known 1940 version, also called The Letter, starred Bette Davis and Herbert Marshall and was directed by William Wyler.

The inspiration for Maugham's story and his subsequent play came from a real-life event which took place in Kuala Lumpur in Malaya in April 1911.

Development of the opera

The collaboration

Both Moravec and Teachout made their operatic debuts with The Letter. Teachout began writing the libretto in November 2006 and started posting an ongoing account of the opera's genesis and development on his blog, About Last Night, when the commission was announced by the Santa Fe Opera on May 9, 2007. He describes it as "a cross between a verismo opera like Tosca and a film noir like Double Indemnity or Out of the Past. We don't want The Letter to sound old-fashioned—Paul's musical language is in no way derivative of Verdi or Puccini—but we do want it to move fast and hit hard."