Trailer
Plot summary
Leslie Crosbie, the wife of a rubber plantation manager in Malaya, says she shot Geoffrey Hammond to save her honor. Her husband Robert is away overnight loading rubber, and the district officer accepts her account of a man who came to the house uninvited. Her composure impresses nearly everyone, and she is taken to Singapore to face a murder charge with the support of the British expatriate community. A letter she wrote to Hammond asking him to come that evening is in other hands, and the family friend who acts as her attorney, Howard Joyce, is not convinced the case is a simple one.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Letter (1940)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
The Production Code Administration rejected Warner Bros.' original adaptation because it contained adultery and an unpunished murder, so a new final scene was added in which the widow Hammond takes her revenge; Mrs. Hammond was also changed from Hammond's Chinese mistress to his Eurasian wife to satisfy the Hays code.SPOILER
Bette Davis and director William Wyler, who had worked together on Jezebel, fought over the scene in which Leslie admits to her husband that she still loves the man she murdered. Davis felt no woman could look at her husband while saying it, walked off the set, then returned and shot it Wyler's way.- Wyler fought Warner Bros. head Jack L. Warner over casting British actor James Stephenson as attorney Howard Joyce. Warner had first suggested Stephenson, then decided the part was too important for an unknown; Wyler stood firm, and Stephenson's performance earned him an Oscar nomination.
- The story came from a real-life scandal: the Eurasian wife of a school headmaster in Kuala Lumpur was convicted of murder after shooting dead a male friend in April 1911, and was pardoned by the local sultan after a public furor.
