Long-thought to be lost, the rare, utterly fascinating,1929 version of The Letter (Warner Archives) is out now on their DVD-on-demand line. This is the only sound film the famed theatrical actress Jeanne Eagels ever made. She was a former Ziegfield Follies girl who exploded on Broadway as Sadie Thompson in Rain in 1922, and sadly died at age 39  (possibly from a drug overdose). Her turbulent life was fictionalized in a biopic starring Kim Novak. But The Letter, based on the play by W. Somerset Maugham, stars Eagels as Leslie Crosbie, the wife of a rubber plantation foreman in Singapore in the '20s. She is secretly having an affair with Geoffrey Hammond (Herbert Marshall, who also appeared the 1940 version starring Bette Davis), and one night, in a fit of panic, sends him an impassioned letter to come and see her. Leslie is distressed about rumors of a liaison Geoffrey is having with an oriental woman named Li-Ti. When he arrives he admits he has no more feelings for her and Leslie shoots him dead. While Leslie stands trial for manslaughter (accusing Hammond of attacking her and killing in self-defense), Li-Ti blackmails Leslie to get back the incriminating missive. Jeanne Eagels' performance is very affected (the British accent doesn't help), and it's hard to see what made her the toast of Broadway at first. Then comes the scene where she lies on the witness stand. It's just mesmerizing. In Eagles' final confrontation with her husband where she screams, "With all my heart....and all my soul...I still love the man I killed," she is electrifying.