Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television, and theater. Regarded as one of the greatest actresses in Hollywood history, she was noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic, sardonic characters and was known for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies, although her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, was the first person to accrue ten Academy Award nominations for acting, and was the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. In 1999, Davis was placed second on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
Jeanne Eagels was an American stage and film actress. Eagels appeared in many Broadway productions, and in the emerging medium of sound films. She was posthumously 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.
The Letter is a 1940 American crime film noir melodrama directed by William Wyler, and starring Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall and James Stephenson. The screenplay by Howard E. Koch is based on the 1927 play of the same name by W. Somerset Maugham derived from his own short story. The play was first filmed in 1929, by director Jean de Limur. The story was inspired by a real-life scandal involving the Eurasian 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. She was pardoned by the local sultan after a public furor.
Dangerous is a 1935 American drama film directed by Alfred E. Green and starring Bette Davis in her first Oscar-winning role. The screenplay by Laird Doyle is based on his story Hard Luck Dame.
Bonita Gloria Granville Wrather was an American actress and producer.
The 2nd Academy Awards, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) on April 3, 1930, at an awards banquet in the Cocoanut Grove of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, honored the best films released between August 1, 1928, and July 31, 1929. This was the first Academy Awards ceremony broadcast on radio, by local station KNX, Los Angeles.
Picturehouse is an American independent entertainment company owned by CEO Bob Berney and COO Jeanne R. Berney. Based in Los Angeles, the company specializes in film marketing and distribution, both in the U.S. and internationally. Its releases have included La Vie en Rose (2007), which earned an Academy Award for Best Actress for Marion Cotillard, Metallica Through the Never (2013), and Adam Wingard's Sundance Film Festival selection The Guest (2014), an Independent Spirit Award nominee starring Dan Stevens.
The Letter is a 1927 play by W. Somerset Maugham, dramatised from a short story that first appeared in his 1926 collection The Casuarina Tree. The story was inspired by the real-life Ethel Proudlock case which involved the wife of the headmaster of Victoria Institution in Kuala Lumpur who was convicted in a murder trial after shooting dead a male friend in April 1911. She was eventually pardoned.
The Casuarina Tree is a collection of short stories by W. Somerset Maugham, set in the Federated Malay States during the 1920s. It was first published by the UK publishing house Heinemann on September 2, 1926. The first American edition was published on September 17, 1926 by George H. Doran. It was re-published by Collins in London under the title The Letter: Stories of Crime. The book was published in French translation as Le Sortilège Malais (1928) and in Spanish as Extremo Oriente (1945).
Brown Girl in the Ring is a 1998 novel written by Jamaican-Canadian writer Nalo Hopkinson. The novel contains Afro-Caribbean culture with themes of folklore and magical realism. It was the winning entry in the Warner Aspect First Novel Contest. Since the selection, Hopkinson's novel has received critical acclaim in the form of the 1999 Locus Award for Best First Novel, and the 1999 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.
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.
Her Cardboard Lover is a 1942 American comedy film directed by George Cukor, starring Norma Shearer, Robert Taylor, and George Sanders. The screenplay by Jacques Deval, John Collier, Anthony Veiller, and William H. Wright is based on the English translation of Deval's 1926 play Dans sa candeur naïve by Valerie Wyngate and P.G. Wodehouse.
Oliver Peters Heggie, billed as O. P. Heggie, was an Australian film and theatre actor best known for portraying the hermit who befriends the Monster in the film Bride of Frankenstein (1935). He was born Otto Peters Heggie at Angaston, South Australia to a local pastoralist. He was educated at Whinham College and the Adelaide Conservatoire of Music. He died in Los Angeles of pneumonia. He is buried at Woodside Cemetery, Yarmouth Port, Barnstable County, Massachusetts.
The Woman from Monte Carlo is an American pre-Code film produced by Warner Bros. subsidiary First National Pictures in 1931 and released on January 9, 1932. It was directed by Michael Curtiz and gave top billing to German star Lil Dagover in her sole Hollywood film. Leading men Walter Huston and Warren William were listed after the title in the manner of supporting players.
Outcast is a 1922 American silent drama film directed by Chester Withey. The film starred Elsie Ferguson and David Powell. William Powell has a small supporting part in this which was his third film.
Man, Woman and Sin (1927) is a silent film produced and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film was directed by Monta Bell and John Gilbert, and stars Gilbert and stage actress Jeanne Eagels in one of her rare film appearances. The film is obscure but survives complete, but has yet to be released on VHS or DVD.
Janie Gets Married is a 1946 American comedy film directed by Vincent Sherman, and written by Agnes Christine Johnston. The film stars Joan Leslie, Robert Hutton, Edward Arnold, Ann Harding, Robert Benchley, and Dorothy Malone. The film was released by Warner Bros. on June 22, 1946.
The Letter is a 1982 American television movie, starring Lee Remick, Ronald Pickup, Jack Thompson, Ian McShane and Christopher Cazenove and directed by John Erman. It is the third film version of the 1927 play of the same title by W. Somerset Maugham.
Woman in the Jungle is a 1931 American drama film directed by Dimitri Buchowetzki and starring Charlotte Ander, Ernst Stahl-Nachbaur and Erich Ponto. It was shot at the Joinville Studios in Paris as the German-language version of The Letter. Such multiple-language versions were common during the early years of sound before dubbing became widespread. Like the original it was based on the 1927 play The Letter by W. Somerset Maugham.
The playwright, novelist and short-story writer W. Somerset Maugham, was a prolific author from the late 19th century until the 1960s. Most of his earliest successes were for the theatre, but he gave up writing plays after 1932. Many of his plays have been adapted for broadcasting and the cinema, as have several of his novels and short stories. The New York Times commented in 1964, "There are times when one thinks that British television and radio would have to shut up shop if there were not an apparently inexhaustible supply of stories by Maugham to turn into 30-minute plays. One recalls, too, the long list of movies that have been made from his novels − Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence, The Painted Veil, The Razor's Edge and the rest.
