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Tara Hanks

~ Author of 'The Mmm Girl' and 'Wicked Baby'

Tara Hanks

Tag Archives: The Letter

Born on This Day: W. Somerset Maugham 1874-1965

25 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by marina72 in Anniversaries, Fiction, Film, Jeanne Eagels, Theatre

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Jeanne Eagels, Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed, Miss Thompson, Rain, Sadie Thompson, The Letter, The Moon and Sixpence, W. Somerset Maugham

Maugham_facing_cameraWilliam Somerset Maugham was born in Paris on January 25, 1874, the fourth of six children. His father was a lawyer for the British Embassy. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was eight, and when his father passed away two years later, Maugham was sent to live with his uncle in England. Continue reading →

Born on This Day: Jean de Limur 1887-1976

13 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by marina72 in Anniversaries, Film, Jeanne Eagels

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Jealousy, Jean de Limur, Jeanne Eagels, Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed, Monta Bell, Paramount, The Letter

Jean de Limur (centre) with Charlie Chaplin (right), 1923

Jean de Limur (centre) with Charlie Chaplin (right), 1923

Jean Chamur Limur was born on November 13, 1887, in Vouhé, a town in Southern France. He began his film career as an actor in Hollywood, under the name Jean de Limur. Continue reading →

Born on This Day: Helen Broderick (1891-1959)

11 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by marina72 in Anniversaries, Film, Theatre

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67th Street, Bette Davis, Claridge Hotel, Eddie Doherty, Helen Broderick, I.S. Mowis, Ina Claire, Jeanne Eagels, Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed, Jumping Jupiter, Lester Crawford, Morosco Theatre, Richard Carle, The Letter, The Rain Girl, Ziegfeld Follies

helen broderick2As part of an ongoing series covering major figures in Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed, I’m looking at the life of Helen Broderick – who danced in the first Ziegfeld Follies, and made the transition from star of Broadway musicals to one of Hollywood’s most beloved character actresses. She was also a loyal friend of Jeanne Eagels, and the mother of Broderick Crawford. Continue reading →

Dan Callahan on Jeanne Eagels, and ‘The Letter’

10 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by marina72 in Film, Jeanne Eagels

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Dan Callahan, Jeanne Eagels, Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed, Kim Stanley, The Chiseler, The Letter

Jeanne Eagels, 'The Letter' (1929)

Jeanne Eagels, ‘The Letter’ (1929)

Dan Callahan is an author and film historian, who has published biographies of Barbara Stanwyck and Vanessa Redgrave. (We refer to his Stanwyck bio, The Miracle Woman, in Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed. As an aspiring actress, Barbara was strongly influenced by Jeanne, and saw her most famous stage role in Rain several times.)

On The Chiseler today, Callahan has written about Jeanne, including some interesting thoughts about her penultimate movie role in The Letter (1929), in which she played another of W. Somerset Maugham’s anti-heroines – the murderous Leslie Crosbie.

The Eagels movie of The Letter is a primitive early talkie, seemingly undirected and stiffly acted by the rest of the cast. (It is thought that what is left of it is a work print, which would explain some of its deficiencies, though not all.) But Eagels’s devil-may-care performance is so deeply in some zone of its own that it comes through the ether to grab you by the throat and it won’t let go. There’s a palpable sense of risk to Eagels’s acting here, as if she were pushing herself and about to collapse at any moment. And maybe the film suits what she is doing. After all, some paintings are more at home in caves than in pretty frames on museum walls …

When her husband means to punish her by keeping their marriage going anyway after her confession, for form and for show, she shouts her revenge at him and kills herself with it: ‘I, with all my heart and soul still love the man I killed! Ha, ha! Take that, will you! With all my heart, and all my soul, I still love the man I killed.’ Eagels has sung those words ‘heart’ and ‘soul’ so that they feel like incantations, and then she just nods to herself and The Letter comes to its abrupt end. By contrast, Bette Davis had to be browbeaten by director William Wyler into saying this line to her husband’s face (she had wanted to look away), and she only says it once.

There is little visible technique in Eagels’s performance in The Letter, no distance to her reckless playing, so that when Leslie is flaming out it is clear that she herself is flaming out, and this links Eagels to a later 1950s Method actress like Kim Stanley, another stage star who finally had to retreat because she couldn’t sustain the level of emotional intensity she liked for long.

‘Noir-ish’ Jeanne in ‘The Letter’

18 Saturday Jul 2015

Posted by marina72 in Film, Jeanne Eagels

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Film Noir, Jeanne Eagels, Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed, The Letter

The Letter 01 - Jeanne Eagels Herbert Marshall

Jeanne Eagels confronts her lover, played by Herbert Marshall, in ‘The Letter’ (1929)

A viewing of Bette Davis’ The Letter remake led one blogger back to Jeanne Eagels’ original performance as the murderess Leslie Crosbie, over at Classic Hollywood:

I re-watched it to see if there was anything noirish about it and wasn’t disappointed. Jeanne’s performance is powerful, the French director Jean De Limur also had scenes that wouldn’t disappoint noir fans. Jeanne Eagels descending the stairs to meet with her murdered lover’s Chinese mistress is pure noir cinematography. I must say this version is my favorite version of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Letter.

Although a work-print has been available for some time, a fully restored version of The Letter (1929) was released on DVD in 2011.

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