Jeanne Eagels - The Letter (1929) - I Still Love the Man I Killed!
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 มิ.ย. 2013
- This is one of the greatest performances in the history of cinema. Jeanne Eagels died shortly after this film was made, receiving a post-humus Oscar nomination for the role. She is one of my favorite actresses and deserves far more recognition for her work.
- ภาพยนตร์และแอนิเมชัน
It is so strange that this 1929 performance touches people in a way that even modern performances don't.
Her performance is so unlike other actors working in movies at the time including the actor she's working with in this scene. Its fascinating to watch.
Yes, he gives her nothing, and still, that performance
She positively chews the scenery- her manic neurosis and ticks work beautifully. What a wonder she is- and way ahead of her time considering that she was among the first vanguard of stage actresses to transition to talking pictures. I first heard of her from an old Kim Novack movie. The movie focused more on her addictions than it did her talent- which was immense. The pity is that she left us before she could truly leave her mark on film. She is a revelation!
It is over the top because she is playing a mad woman. Those little up and down head shakes to emphasize a point are unforgettable.
You can see her building up and unraveling in the scene. It's what was called for. I only wish I could have seen her on the stage.
The movie bio was pure garbage and fiction. Too bad. Eagels' family sued, but if the truth had been filmed, they would have really flipped their wigs, man
I only learned of her talent because I bought the house she once lived in on Cedar Lane in Ossining NY. Her crazy spirit lives on in this home.
TELL US MORE!!! What kind of a house is it? When did she live there?
Nurse Grace It's a 1927 Tudor-style home with year-round panoramic views of the Hudson River. She lived here from 1927 until her death in '29. She had her apartment in the city, but this was her "country" home.
That's astounding! I'm glad this historic property is in good hands!!!!
So do you hear her emoting and carrying on at all hours, or is it just kind of a "presence" you can feel? Or both?
My God , I dream of owning that house. Iam obsessed with jeanne eagels. I have a thank you letter that she wrote in London in 1920 thanking someone for inviting her to a party. Came from a collector in london.
It is 1929. Sound is in its infancy.. No one knows how to direct actors in a sound film. Most performances are much like the male actor here. And then we see Jeanne Eagles who reaches up and rips your heart out. Perhaps it's stagey. But the raw acting genius cannot be denied. The tragedy is that she died before the medium caught up with her.
"The male actor here" is Reginald Owen. And I do rather like what he does here -- he's clearly furious throughout the entire scene, and this rage is keeping the words from coming out, except when she lets him speak. I love how bitter every line he says here is.
@@blofeld39 I think it was his first film.
He is an old time 'theatrical' actor and to see him with Eagels is like a time warp.
@@poetcomic1 I just looked and this was his first 'talkie' although he appeared in a few silent films before 'The letter'. But yes, he appeared in many films.
@@poetcomic1 Funny you say that, considering what a long career he had AFTER this film. Sadly, Jeanne Eagels didn't. :-(
she is riveting. She has the ability to make you forget she's acting, but actually Leslie Crosbie.
Jeanne Eagles is over the top amazing in this scene.
She shades her extremely emotional performance with a touch of madness. One is SCARED of her.
Had she not died in 1929, she would have been a major force as an actress in the early 1930s in Hollywood. Would love to have seen her on stage.
Had she not died in 1929, she would have died in 1930.
@@KingOFuh um...what?
Excuse me?
You can hear the pain in her voice as she tells him that she still loves the man she killed
Absolutely spellbinding. I love the way she throws away phrases that others would stress. She is so spontaneous, you never know what will come next. such a talent.
I could not be more in agreement! WOW! This is truly the heart of the matter when it comes to acting: raw, true, and fearless. Brava!
I agree clear where DAVIS AND BANKHEAD learnt their trade
@@mjc5509 Bette Davis says the exact same line, but the reading is apologetic, liked she's ashamed to admit it. Jeanne's reading is a taunting triumphant FU to the husband! Forever a WOW!
I saw this film for the first time a few weeks ago and just rewatched it last night. Absolutely stunned by Jeanne's raw and gripping performance that demands your attention. You couldn't have picked a better character for her to play than Leslie Crosbie. A live wire who's unpredictable. You never know what she's going to do next, how or when. I thought the story was really well done too, in terms of both writing and pacing. They don't try to stretch out what at it's core, is a very simple plot. The dialogue is honest and frank, not shying away from the racism of the time and trying to gloss over it like so many other films did back then. For 1929, pretty damn innovative but criminally overlooked as the remake starring Bette Davis practically overshadows it.
I can't believe she didn't win the Oscar. Mary Pickford's win for Coquette is still one of the worst in the category of Best Actress, as it was solely based on the standing she had in the industry rather than off of the merits of her performance. But at the end of the day, Jeanne is still the true winner to me as people keep remembering what she did in such a short frame of time. I hope one day to see Jealousy, which she starred in with Frederic March, and experience the magic of this astounding actress all over again.
Holy crap, that was amazing.
Like her or not, she certainly keeps the viewer watching!
I had never heard of Jeanne Eagels and just happened to watch "The Letter" the other night on TCM when it was shown after the 1940 version. I liked the 1929 version so much better, particularly Jeanne Eagels' performance. I felt as though I was watching reality TV instead of a movie. The style of direction and acting was SO different. More gripping.
I saw this on TCM last year, what a revelation! She created a new style of acting, and certainly Bette Davis (who was a marvel) borrowed from her (they both worked with George Arliss). Like Paul Muni, in the Valiant, that year, he and the Eagels truly understood the new medium.
Maybe in other roles, but not in this. Davis' Leslie Crosbie is a completely different creation and vastly superior to this, in my opinion.
Everyone loves Bette Davis but Jeanne Eagles mopped the floor with her as far as being an artist.
A great stage actress who doesn't act as well in films. And she was not better than Bette Davis. No one is better than Bette Davis.
@@SymphonyBrahms 👏👏👏
No way. The Davis performance and Wyler's direction are absolute perfection. This is hammy melodrama.
Say what you like, but years from now, long after we are all dead, people will still be watching Jeanne Eagels in this scene and being moved by the sheer raw intensity of her performance. It is like witnessing a comet coruscating across the sky, burning with blazing brilliance before finally fading away forever.
oh my god, she was great! I have goosebumps all over!
She's marvelous!!!!
Great actress!
Considering the usual acting technique of the early sound era, she's extremely alive! Of course she's a bit stagey, but that's because few knew how to direct film at that time. Compare her performance with his extremely, extremely wooden one! It would have been fascinating to see her onstage....or in a film 10 years later, when all the elements of the film medium were smoother.
Nurse Grace it's because when sound came in, they went to Broadway for people who could talk. as for the actor, he's playing a sort of wooden guy.
RUBBER !!! All about RUBBER !!! Awesome. Love it.
WOW! What an actress!! Beautiful! Didn't know her... She reminds me Bette Davis with her hands pressing her fingers all the time...
I read somewhere that Bette Davis admired her work greatly, and when she played the very same role in the remake of The Letter, she watched this film several times and took notes from Eagels' performance :) Glad you liked it!
Yeah, Ben. Though I like more this scene then the 1940's one. Eagels' Leslie seems to be more mean, more bad than Bette's...
Ben Russell Did you know that the movie Bette Davis won her first Academy Award for (Dangerous) was based on Jeanne Eagles life?
+Su Majewski I didn't know that wow!!!
Elvis Wellington guess who Bette copied, besides Tallulah? Eagles also did Of Human Bondage. both blow Ms.Davis away! part of it was J.E. was truly manic drinker and doper. too bad she never did anything with Colin Clive!
I don’t know why…. Jeanne Eagels’ performance fascinates me . Terrific lady actor.
What a wonderful interpretation! Great great great talent. Amazing actress!!!
Her last film was "Jealousy," with Fredric March. It was released about two weeks before she died. It's said to be lost, which is a shame, since this would be her only sound picture still around.
yes: it's a darn shame that it's lost to the ages
I dont care about "Jealousy" anyway, only this one.
I now know where Charles Ludlum got his wonderful mannerisms and delivery...
Facts about this movie:
This movie The Letter was filmed in 1928 in Astoria Studios, Queens New York. that studio is still there. The movie was released in April 1929. The lady in this clip Jeanne Eagels died just shy of six months after this movie was released on October 1929 from a drug overdose. Here is the video link of here grave site. th-cam.com/video/kEnRaEi-Uhw/w-d-xo.html
whoa! way ahead of her time!!
I'd always heard that Jeanes nick-name was Gin Eagles but i had never seen any of her work. This performance in this movie is extraordinary and brilliant !!!! Definately one of the best actresses to hit the stage AND movies!!! Such a shame that she left us so soon!!!
Haha I love the way she growls “DON’T...say thattt.”
This was one performance that Jeanne Eagles herself had already honed on the Broadway Stage to great acclaim! (right after Gladys Cooper had created it on the West End, in London!), from a play by Somerset Maugham, based on a short story of his. So Ms. Eagles was PRIMED for it when it came time to its filmization for the movies. 11 years later, Bette Davis (who had seen Eagles on stage playing the role in NYC, and who had also seen this movie) borrowed (as evidenced here!!) many of Ms. Eagles mannerisms and nervous twitching for the role. Whatever faults or genius, one cannot take ones eyes off of these two ladies when you watch their versions of "The Letter"!
Actually Eagels never did The Letter on stage. The Somerset Maugham play that Eagels did to great acclaim was Rain, as Sadie Thompson.
Am I the only one who liked Kim Novak’s performance in “”Jeanne Eagles”?
I'm deaf now, but I can see that she was extremely intense and she probably held her own against the best of her time. I hadn't known about this actress before. Thanks for posting. I saw the movie about her starring Kim Novak.
"Rubber! Rubber! Rubber!" She really managed to convey how sick she was..... of rubber.
I had to watch her now. Bette is on doing her version of this. While Bette did a thoroughly good job, Jeanne Eagels is raw without artiface...I vote for Jeanne ❤️
My latest video. A scene from the film 'The Letter' (1929). It contains one of the greatest performances of all time by Jeanne Eagles.
Glad I am not alone on this one, Ben. Surely the most riveting performance of the early sound era. What a loss!
You da man!
and when she heard about that, when she heard about that Chi- nese..woman!
There's a picture of her with her dark hair pinned up, it's in profile-- it's the most beautiful picture of any woman, looking so fierce but sweet too, when she was so young, and she's quoted as saying all those actressy things about self-expression. What must have happened to her in just a few years? Pushed around quite a bit I bet.
Heroin and morphine.
Fantastic.
She would've been an amazing Blanche Dubois.
I think she would've been wonderful as Georgie Elgin in the film adaptation of The Country Girl.
I had to watch this ending again. I just saw the BD version. This ending, with her manic temper is so much better than BD's knife in the ❤.
I'm going to watch THE LETTER next week or so. My mom was in Jealousy with her, which I thought was her last film (lost apparently). Found a book on her THE RAIN GIRL in the Academy of Motion Pictures Library. Just last week I looked up the credits of the DP and the screenwriter on Jealousy and was surprised to find they had sterling films on their resumes - writer Garrett Fort (Frankenstein, Dracula and Mark of Zorro ) DP Alfred Gliks (An American in Paris and The Searchers )
How fascinating! Did your mom ever say anything about Jeanne to you ? Would LOVE to hear about that!
@@Vic1206 Never mentioned any of all that. Only thing i recall about her show biz is meeting Eddie Mannix in his office at MGM. Also she was offered lead in Trader Horn but didn't want to go to Africa to shoot it for a year. Edwina Booth came down with some bizarre tropical disease from doing it.
@@davestauffer3912 Meeting Eddie Mannix is quite interesting too! Good intuition about Trader Horn Thanks for sharing!
@@Vic1206 @Vic1206 Eddie Mannix office was nothing like in the HAIL CAESAR MOVIE. For one, he had a model train on the wall that I tried to wheedle out of him. He jokingly tried to "bribe" my mom (he was friends with my Grandfather in the old neighborhood before my mom went to Hollywood) to stay in CA (then I could get it). He ended up giving me an animation cell to TOM AND JERRY which their new feature movie is opening on HBO now.
@@davestauffer3912 Thanks for sharing these great stories of your family and their famous friends!
If you like this clip you should watch the movie"Jeanne Eagels", starring Kim Novak from 1957. I saw it about 45 years ago and never forgot it. Just watched Kim Novak interviewed on TCM from 2013. She was great and very interesting woman. I had never seen her interviewed before and I loved seeing her.Agnes Moorehead, Endora from Bewitched, played her acting coach. She's great too.
George Long Kim Novak's performance in "Jeanne Eagels" was terrific; I thought she would've won an Oscar for her performance. Few people know that Eagels' big hit was "Rain," one of Joan Crawford's very early movies. She's wonderful in that. Everyone wanted to be Jeanne...such a short life for a superb actress. Like I always say about classic film..."They don't make "em like they used to"...but a handful of exceptions.
Over. The. TOP!
Intensely alive ...
Great clip!
Assolutamente fantastica!
🌹🌹🌹❤🌹🌹🌹
Magnificent.
she.playing.more.modern.way.as.was.normally.in.her.time
Jeanne Eagels actress legendary Best 🎭
Theatre 🎭
🕯
Alternate titles: "That Chinese Woman" or "RUBBER! RUBBER! RUBBER!" or "I'll Give You Something to Remember!"
Quel jeux d actrice
Quelle prestance
C était une formidable femme de son époque
Strong. Moving. Wow.
Both Eagles talking films,The Letter and Jealousy played on a double bill in the early 1970s in NYC at Theatre 80, so why is it listed as a long lost film?
I hope this film will be restored.
I wonder if there is any chance of ever seeing her in “Jealousy”...or is it lost?
yea what a performance wow, where are they all today, turned evertything into fiflth today what a shame
Would have loved to see and hear her trading barbs with Bettie Davis or Katherine Hepburn.
Madeleine Kahn reminds me of her.
oh,she.died.after,.....i.did.not.know...sad
i.know.this.film.only.the.Wyler-Davis.version
She has the speaking voice of a woman much older.
I suppose this way of acting was popular back in those days…..
Well this was when sound pictures were still sort of experimental, and the acting style here is a holdover from live stage performances
I loved Betty's version best 👌
Jeanne Eagels' biopic (of the same name) was released in 1957. It starred Kim Novak and Jeff Chandler.
BTW- The "real one" was a much better actress...Just sayin"...
The only thing different from the 1940 Bette Davis version is the Chinese womansticks a knife in her when she goes into the garden. I wonder if they filmed it that way for the 1929 version... then cut it?
No, Jeanne's version follows the play and Bette preferred the punishment of having to live a lie with her husband. The production code dictated that Leslie pay the price for her sins.
@@donnamartin3451 Thanks for the info
She is perfection. He, on the other hand, STINKS.
Excellent performance...for the stage.
She died the same year this movie was made of a drug and alcohol mixture.
Eagels looks to me like she is high as a kite on this. In addition, she is so mannered as to make this unintentionally funny.
absolutely stoned on heroin.
Very stagey, over the top, hammy acting style - surprised so many lemmings here pretending it's a Master Class. I'm not even sure she had fully memorized her lines!
"Rubbah, Rubbah, Rubbah, RUBBAH!!" She appears to be ranting a lot and playing to the balcony. Jeanne Eagels must have been quite something on stage, but like a few other legends she she appears just strange on screen. You can certainly see where Bankhead studied her the way actresses before then studied Ethel Barrymore. But the way she speaks ("Veddy" for "very," "Heah" for "here" and she even says "penished" instead of "punished.") is funny. Sometimes she just stands, writhing as if she has bugs under her skin. There's an appeal and a hypnotic quality, but it's a little grotesque, like watching Geraldine Page without a director to shape her performance.
unclealand I know you probably already know this but I'll just hash out the point anyway. Film acting was still in it's infancy. No one really knew how to act for the medium, so they thought their theatre technique would work in film but of course it didn't translate well. Also, at that point, most actors had to force themselves to leave behind the pantomime like mannerisms they used in silent films. Eagles performance is quite stellar if you keep it in its context. It's a shame she didn't do more films.
You criticize her for saying veddy and heah, but she _is_ supposed to be playing an Englishwoman, and an Englishwoman of that period and class would indeed have said veddy and heah.
freddie troop indeed,and then you,old chap.
thenk you,that is. damn yootoob
If you've ever read the original story, "The Letter", she's playing Leslie Crosbie EXACTLY as Somerset Maugham described her -- "a gibbering death's-head".