NEW REGENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 797, 18 October 1929, Page 17

NEW REGENT

“THE LETTER” The tremendously powerful alltalking drama, “The Letter,” based on Somerset Maugham’s play, will commence its Auckland season at the Usew Regent Theatre this evening. The story opens with Leslie Crosbie (Jeanne Eagels) and her husband, Robert (Reginald Owen), living in a bungalow on a rubber plantation in the country near Singapore. They

are a pair of conventional English colonial married folk. One evening Robert goes into the city on business, and Leslie at once sends a letter to Geoffrey Hammond (Herbert Marshall), a dissipated bachelor on a neighbouring

plantation. The

arrival of the letter interrupts a love j scene between Hammond a Chinese | woman, Li-Ti (Lady Tsen Mei), and j he goes to the Crosbie bungalow at once. There he is shot and killed by Leslie. In couxt Leslie tells of the shooting, of how Hammond was drinking, and attempted to force his attentions on her, and of how she killed him In selfdefence. It is a cool and perfectly convincing account, impressing the conviction that the jury on the morrow will return a verdict of not guilty. That evening Leslie’s lawyer, Joyce (O. P. Heggie), a friend of the family, learns that the Chinese woman who lived at Hammond’s house is in possession of the letter sent him just before the shooting. The Chinese woman sends word that she will accept 10,000 dollars for the letter. Joyce decides to sacrifice professional ethics, and suppress the letter for his friend's sake. The letter is acquired, Joyce advancing his own personal fortune to buy it. Leslie is released by the jury, and all go to the Crosbie home that evening to celebrate the victory. At the party. Robert insists that his friend tell him the expense of the trial, saying that he intends to buy an estate elsewhere, so that Leslie will not be confronted with the memory attached to their present home. Joyce is forced to tell him that his money is gone—that the trial cost him (Robert) 10,000 dollars, his fortune. Robert demands to know why. and Joyce gives him the letter. Robert is crushed. Leslie then tells them that she has never loved Robert in all of their ten years of married life; that she had been in love with Hammond, and that when she learned that she had been discarded by him for a Chinese woman her rage knew no bounds. Hammond told her that they were through on the evening she sent for him, and she shot him. Her alibi was one of her own construction. On the same programme there will be a bright selection of talking and singing featurettes, including jazz music by Rudy Valee and his jazz band, songs by Tito Schipa, the great lyric tenor, a Pathe Sound Xews and Audio Review, and finally a Music Masters Series, “Schubert’s Friends,” in music and eon s%