BETTE DAVIS IN “THE LETTER”
Somerset Maugham’s Heroines
The actresses take their turn, one after another, at Somerset Maugham’s “The Letter.” At present, it is Bette Davis, who is completing the film from this play on the Warner Brothers’ sound stages, writes a Hollywood correspondent. Miss Davis has had at least two famous predecessors in the role, Katharine Cornell and Jeanne Eaglea. Mr Maugham's heroines are something of an enigma to this writer, who has sometimes thought that the women of Mr Maugham’s plays and stories were disliked by their author. Otherwise, how account for the dislike of them Mr Maugham seems to generate in his audiences?
If you remember Miss Davis
in Mr Maugham’s “Of Human Bondage,” and in her recent “Jezebel,” you have a faint idea of her in “The Letter,” in the role of Leslie Crosbie. Hollywood gave Miss Davis an Academy Award for her appearance in “Jezebel,” and would have given her one for “Of Human Bondage” if it had bethought itself in time. As it was, she received her first Academy Award for “Dangerous,” a year later. It was one of her poorest pictures. But then, everyone knew this was Hollywood’s way of making up to Miss Davis for ignoring her in perhaps her greatest screen role.
Genevieve Tobin and Charles Ruggles are in the cast of “No Time for Comedy,” which William Keighley is directing for Warners.
The film world is anxiously watching experiments now being made with penny-in-the-slot picture machines.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ST19400918.2.89.6
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Southland Times, Issue 24234, 18 September 1940, Page 8
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247BETTE DAVIS IN “THE LETTER” Southland Times, Issue 24234, 18 September 1940, Page 8
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