This Blu-ray re-premieres a notable Joan Crawford picture that’s been all but unseeable since 1936. It’s romance and murder the way the Rich do it: Crawford’s swank socialite falls in love with the ideal mate played by Robert Montgomery, but she can’t shake a foreign lover who would rather blow up a scandal than give her up. What else are little bottles of poison for?  Nils Asther is perfectly slimy as the Uruguayan louse; the dialogue gets thick and flowery but Clarence Brown’s direction is excellent, and Crawford is in control of her performance … too much in control?  How often do we get a ‘new’ picture by a golden-era movie star?

Letty Lynton
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1932 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 84 min. / Street Date June 30, 2026 / Available at MovieZyng / 24.98
Starring: Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery, Nils Asther, Lewis Stone, May Robson, Louise Closser Hale, Emma Dunn, Walter Walker, William Pawley, Edgar Norton, Lee Phelps.
Cinematography: Oliver T. Marsh
Art Director: Cedric Gibbons
Film Editor: Conrad A. Nervig
Music Composer: William Axt
Written by John Meehan adaptation by Wanda Tuchock from a novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes
Executive Producer Irving Thalberg
Produced by Hunt Stromberg
Directed by Clarence Brown

A little bit of Hollywood history was laid to rest a couple of months ago, a story that began in the 1850s in Scotland. The people that wrapped it up were The Warner Archive Collection’s George Feltenstein, and the grandson of Joan Crawford.

The 1932 pre-Code film  Letty Lynton had seen few screenings since 1936 on the basis of a copyright dispute in which MGM lost rights of distribution. The decision stayed in force all this time, something we became aware of in 2001 when putting together a TCM documentary. Almost all of Joan Crawford’s films were easily referenced, but Letty Lynton couldn’t be shown in any form. That didn’t end until this year: the ban was based on the copyright to the original play Dishonored Lady, which expired in 2025. Thus Letty Lynton made a re-premiere at the TCM Fest on May 1 of this year … and a fully remastered Blu-ray is now available.

We keep finding reasons to review Blu-ray revivals of Joan Crawford films … but one that almost nobody has seen?  Extra interest comes from a connection to a famous 19th century murder trial. It’s also a significant footnote in the history of Hollywood fashion.

What we’ve got is Joan Crawford, several films into her impressive makeover period, with a new painted face and gowns by Adrian. George Hurrell’s classy photographs helped make her the epitome of Hollywood glamour. In 1932 the Depression was going strong, and a big part of Hollywood’s work was creating a fantasy life for the down and out. Whereas a feature like  Possessed indulged the fairy tale of a common small town girl transforming into a glamorous, cultured socialite, Crawford’s Letty Lynton is a society-page Blue Blood from the get-go.

Letty Lynton’s only problems are the romantic kind. Socialites don’t hold down jobs. They instead enjoy the high life, taking exotic cruises to escape family problems, or just boredom. We meet Letty dancing the Tango in Montevideo. By churchgoing standards she has become a fallen woman, the lover of a suave but domineering cosmopolitan, Emile Renaul (Nils Asther). Letty went to South America to get away from the disapproval of her tight-laced mother (May Robson), but now she wants to put her life in some kind of order. Emile considers Letty his property. He has no intention of letting her go, so she sneaks onto a steamship for the three-week voyage home.

On this return cruise Letty meets the cure for her ills, a charming and funny New Yorker from a wealthy family like her own. Jerry Darrow (Robert Montgomery) asks no prying questions and doesn’t even try to kiss her, but after three weeks at sea they fall in love. Engagement news has already reached New York when they dock, and all is fine until Letty sees that Emile is waiting for her. He still claims her as his. Worse, he has a stack of her intimate love letters, that he will give to the tabloids if she doesn’t join him on the next boat back to Uruguay. Within hours, Letty is eyeing a vial of poison in her mother’s medicine cabinet.

On its own merit Letty Lynton is a good Joan Crawford vehicle, with a strong story. The female audience of 1932 may have concerned themselves mostly with Crawford’s appearance. When top stardom arrived at MGM she made her screen image into a science, working hard with makeup to perfect the ‘look’ she wanted. But the big news in this show was made by the ‘Letty Lynton Dress’ created for her by designer Gilbert Adrian. It’s  been written about ever since. Women went for it and the fashion industry was flooded with knockoffs that sold by the thousands. We’re also told that this was the movie in which Adrian decided to widen the shoulders of her dresses, something that became a Crawford trademark.

The movie itself shows its age. A couple of the ‘romantic’ dialogues with the oily Nils Asther dip into rapturous lines almost as flowery as the “I love you, I love you” spoofery of  Singin’ in the Rain. Nils Asther is more than convincing as a proud Latin-European millionaire who must come out on top of every argument. Robert Montgomery is also in great form, having adapted his collegiate-posh-casual manner into a winning charm. With a hint of boyish play, his chit-chat is slick and his manners impeccable. His Jerry Darrow is the Darn Swell Guy that will redeem Letty’s ‘3 months of Sin’ in South America.

What about Joan Crawford’s acting?  That’s always been a matter of taste. Most everything she does looks studied, rehearsed, worked over for maximum effect. Her subtle flashes of expression feel just as practiced … except that most of her playing works, in the context and pitch of her melodramatic movie vehicles. ^*  Only once does the Cute Act between Letty and Jerry really fall flat. After an unfunny remark, Letty takes several seconds to give forth with a cultured, lady-like and completely unconvincing laugh. It’s a surprising false note.

In terms of direction Letty Lynton need make no apologies. Clarence Brown was her best director of this period; with such a simple story to tell he’s able to set up shots as if for a silent movie. We’d know what was happening even if the audio were turned off.

The pressure never lets up on Letty’s ordeal … if the cultured cad Emile Renaul releases the ‘hot’ letters, both the Lynton and Darrow families could be ruined, ruined I say. Letty’s mother appears to hate her. Naturally, Letty tells her noble fiance nothing of her troubles, or of her fling in Uruguay. Letty Lynton’s transgressions stand out strongly in the annals of pre-Code hanky-panky. Letty has sex out of wedlock, and creates a situation in which her lover dies of poisoning. In what we see, it looks like she’s preparing to poison Emile. After her strikes her down, Letty also appears to be getting ready to kill herself. Suicide would be a third Cardinal No-No of the Production Code.

A story about social barriers, in which a lover kills an invconvenient partner in hopes of a dream life with a more desirable mate?  Letty Lynton has parallels with Dreiser’s book An American Tragedy, made into the classic picture  A Place in the Sun. In this case the sexes are reversed.

The shocker for fans of pre-Code is what happens when the D.A. (Lewis Stone) sets down Letty, her mother, Jerry, and Letty’s maid Miranda (Louise Closser Hale) in his office. With a motive and more than enough evidence to cinch a conviction, he expects to extract a quick confession. Instead, the movie turns into an endorsement of the Upper Crust’s right to circumvent justice. Since the movie is so ‘new,’ we’ll skip the details. It’s implied that the D.A. will be going up against the entire New York monied establishment, to look after the rights of some ‘mongrel foreigner.’  Talk about giving ammunition to this writer’s bias against MGM’s elitist morality … the crime isn’t really ambiguous, leaving Letty Lynton as the prime pre-Code in which someone gets away with murder and lives happily ever after.

We like Letty Lynton but admit that all these side issues is what makes it memorable. We remember Nils Asther from  The Bitter Tea of General Yen and  The Man in Half Moon Street, and his Emile Renaul here is a solid villain. Joan Crawford’s fans have got a treat coming. For them, it’s if she had made a completely new picture.

Even if one looks only as far as the Wikipedia entry, the story of the original  Madeleine Smith is fascinating. She seems to have found a lot of freedom in her varied, amorous life. She joined the Fabian Society; one of her accomplishments was popularizing the use of table Place Mats over Tablecloths. And she was probably guilty as Hell, too. Wotta dame!

The Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray of Letty Lynton is a stunningly well-preserved show. A new 4K scan makes it sparkle. Warners/Turner had mostly good luck storing and maintaining their archives, and this title can’t have come out of the can very often. It isn’t like many official dupes or 16mm copies were made.

MGM’s high production values show mostly in the cinematography around the famous Crawford face and the Letty Lynton gowns. Unlike some pictures from the pre-Code era, everything looks pristine, with a fine-grained image.

The WAC has a stack of extras on tap. Crawford takes roles in several radio plays, on different shows. A long-form documentary is a 2005 item about MGM’s producer Irving Thalberg, made by Robert Trachtenberg. It begins with the F. Scott Fitzgerald connection, as Thalberg provided the template for Fitzgerald’s Monroe Stahr.

Letty Lynton
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Very Good and so rare that fans will find it Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Documentary: Irving Thalberg, the Prince of Hollywood
Joan Crawford radio appearances:
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)
‘Gulf Screen Theater’ None Shall Part Us (10/15/1939).
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: June 8, 2026
(7539lynt)

^*  After finishing Letty Lynton I happened to land on a TCM cablecast of The Merry Widow, with Jeanette Macdonald playing a spirited young lady of high fashion. Macdonald’s little looks of surprise, social cunning and self-satisfied amusement seemed far more genuinely natural — less mannered, more spontaneous.

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