The Letter (Warner Bros.) (1940)

DYNAMIC OPENING SCENE IN LETTER’ COMING 10 STRAND Coolie boys drowsing in their hammocks start as the crack of a revolver shot splits the still air of the rubber plantation. A man staggers through the palely piercing moonlight, stumbles down the steps of the plantation house, falls in a shadow. He is followed by a woman. Blindly, as mechanically as if she were wielding a whip, she pours four more shots into his squirming body. This is the opening scene of “The Letter,” film version of the Somerset Maugham play. It begins with Bette Davis committing murder. “Cut!” eries Director William Wyler. “It’s a take.” If it’s a take, it must be the fifteenth time he’s shot the scene. Mr. Wyler is meticulous. Bette drops the gun in the sand. “I’m still afraid of those things,” she says. “I hate guns. “I’m the kind of a person who hides in closets on the Fourth of July. Noises frighten me to death.” Miss Davis has played femme fatale in more pictures than you could count on two hands. But this is the first time she has taken a gun in hand to murder a man. She liked the scene. It is a startling beginning for any picture, but she doesn’t like the gun. “T killed a man once before,” said Miss Davis. “That was in a play called ‘Broadway,’ in which I played my very first lead. “It was so nervous that I shot him ten minutes too soon in the second act. I was supposed to shoot him once. I shot him three times, and he was dead, dead, dead. He had to lie there and play dead while we ad libbed all over him.” David Newell, whom Bette murders in “The Letter’ was also dead, dead, dead. “That’s the first time I ever died in a picture,” he said. He used to be Kay Francis’s leading man. “I ought to be dead with more’n sixty bullets in me. Davis sure kills ’em.”’ “Ugh,” said Miss Davis. Scrambled Symphony Margaret Tallichet sent husband William Wyler a gag birthday present on the set of “The Letter,” which he directed. It was a beautiful, large and showy harmonica, and the_ director grabbed it, started to play. But the notes had been scrambled— high, low, bass and treble in wild confusion! After the laugh, he got a real one just as good as the trick harmonica looked. Advice, Unlimited Childless young ladies such as Frieda Inescort and Elizabeth Earle were giving advice to James Stephenson, while working together on “The Letter” set,.on how to raise his new baby. Stephenson asked how they knew so much about childraising. “Well, wesen’t we children once, ourselves?’”’ asked Miss Earle after a blank pause. Still L13; Mat 211—30c SHE STANDS ACCUSED—Herbert Marshall, Bette Davis and James Stephenson in a tensely dramatic scene from the film based on Somerset Maugham's play, “The Letter," which starts its local run Friday at the Strand. New Bette Davis Film Has Plenty Dramatic Action Murders for Love in New Film Version Of Somerset Maugham’s “The Letter”’ In those circles where such things are discussed, Bette Davis would be known as a “repeater.” The one thing she hasn’t learned is how to stay out of jail, and important cities all over the world can boast of having thrown the famed actress into the clink at one time or another. Miss Davis, cinematically speaking, never seems to benefit from these unpleasant experiences so far as regeneration is concerned. According to the box office receipts that attend her every fall from grace, her antisocial conduct is deeply appreciated. At the present moment Miss Davis is undergoing another investigation by the minions of law and order, this time in Singapore. This legal grilling is for scenes in “The Letter,” the picture opening Friday at the Strand in which Miss Davis stars, with Herbert Marshall and James Stephenson at War on Somerset Maugham’s famous play, she will spend her usual time in the jail house until she is acquitted. ner Bros. In the drama based As mentioned before, this runin with the law holds no novelty for the errant Miss Davis. It was not so very long ago that she was lodged in the Conciergerie in Paris until the authorities decided what to do with her. Be it said in Miss Davis’ favor, however, that in “All This and Heaven, Too,” in which Charles Boyer was the cause of so much of her trouble, she was merely the victim of circumstances beyond her control, as they say in the courtroom, but it serves to illustrate Miss Davis’ unflagging affinity for the police of all nations. The fact that she is acquitted in “The Letter” does not mean that she is innocent. It’s just the Davis wiles that obtain for her a brief respite until justice, as it must to all men, catches up. Still L309; Mat 213—30c BETTE AT HER BEST — As the central figure. in. Somerset Maugham's supreme dramatic masterpiece, "The Letter," Bette Davis is said to have her finest role to date. Film opens Friday at Strand. BETTE DAVIS WANTS TO PLAY ALL OF MAUGHAM HEROINES ette Davis has a new goal and ambition. She would like, ultimately, to enact for the screen the whole gallery of W. Somerset Maugham heroines. From the amoral wife in “Cakes and Ale” to the oft-presented Sadie Thompson of “Rain,” there is not, according to Miss Davis, a dramatic dud in the lot. “Of course,” the star admitted a few days ago, “I have had marvelous luck with Maugham heroines.” Miss Davis thinks that her success in portraying Maugham characters is due to her willingness to accept the author’s unrelenting dissections of the feminine soul, and pass them on unsoftened and unexcused. She did it in “Of Human Bondage,” and she does it again in her latest picture, “The Letter,” which opens at the Strand Friday. “Even if I had never played any of the women Maugham creates, I’d still be fascinated by them. They challenge me.” There seems to be no unsurmountable obstacles between Miss Davis and her goal, a survey of the situation indicates. Many Maugham stories are owned by various studios, who would probably be glad either to sell them to Warner Bros. or borrow Miss Davis to play their heroines. Since reports on “The Letter” reactions have gone around Hollywood, the film town is fairly well convinced that the DavisMaugham combination has certain magical qualities. It has also been rumored that Warner Bros. in New York are starting negotiations there for the purchase of further Maugham properties. It is the untouched part of the Maugham gallery that particularly appeals to Miss Davis. She feels sure that it contains more histrionic riches than it has yet been made to yield. And she would like to do them. Redbook Cites “Letter” as Picture of the Month Red Book Magazine’s selection for their “Picture of the Month,” in their December issue just out on the newsstands is “The Letter,” the new Bette Davis starring film which is scheduled to open on Friday at the Strand Theatre. The _ selection was made by Douglas W. Churchill, noted film critic. The. strong supporting cast in “The Letter” includes Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson, Gale Sondergaard, Bruce Lester and many others. William Wyler directed the film from the screen play by Howard Koch, based on. W. Somerset Maugham’s play. Eee oN P. ublicity