Letty Lynton │ Warner Archive Collection
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment
by CHAD KENNERK
It’s been quite a year for classic film fans, thanks to the Warner Archive Collection. Following their release of the forever unavailable Marion Davies comedy It’s a Wise Child comes another revelatory home video first. The ‘lost’ Joan Crawford film Letty Lynton can thankfully now be found on Blu-ray in glorious 1080p HD. Having fallen into obscurity, Crawford’s late grandson Casey LaLonde helped to spearhead the rescue of the 1932 pre-Code drama from years of legal limbo.
MGM based the story on Marie Belloc Lowndes’ 1931 novel Letty Lynton, but the film was pulled from distribution in 1936 due to a major copyright lawsuit in which playwrights Edward Sheldon and Margaret Ayer Barnes claimed the film was too similar to Dishonored Lady, their play based on the same case, the 1857 murder trial of Madeleine Smith. With the playwrights having won in federal court, the film disappeared on January 17, 1936, never to be seen publicly or commercially since – until now.
The world premiere of the 4K restoration screened to a sold-out crowd at the TCM Classic Film Festival this May, where LaLonde and Warner Bros. Discovery Library Historian George Feltenstein reintroduced the film to audiences. On the TCM carpet, LaLonde shared that making his grandmother’s work “available for commercial distribution again has been one of my lifetime goals.” As with It’s a Wise Child, the wait was worth it. Joan Crawford is striking as the vibrant young socialite who flees a toxic relationship in South America with the domineering Emile (Nils Asther) and falls for the wealthy Jerry Darrow (Robert Montgomery) during her transatlantic voyage. Poshly directed by Clarence Brown and dripping with sleek gowns designed by Adrian, Letty Lynton is a must-see.
In Roy Newquist’s Conversations with Joan Crawford, Crawford gushed about Grand Hotel before adding, “Oddly enough, Letty Lynton was even more of a smash for me, personally. One hell of a story and script and a character I could really come to grips with, thanks to Clarence Brown again. Adrian’s costuming, by the way, was absolutely gorgeous, but he was so expert that he never made me feel as though I was being used as a clothes-horse. If there is ever a Joan Crawford retrospective, I hope they show this one.”
Special features include the 2005 archival feature-length documentary Irving Thalberg: Prince of Hollywood and a series of late 1930s Joan Crawford radio appearances, including Good News of 1938 (5/19/1938), Lux Radio Theater - A Doll’s House (6/6/1938), Good News of 1939 (10/20/1938), The Silver Theater - The Train Ride (5/7/1939) and the Gulf Screen Guild Theater - None Shall Part Us (10/15/1939).
Letty Lynton is available on Blu-ray 30 June from Warner Archive Collection.
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