Image: May 18, 1932, “Letty Lynton” is opening in Los Angeles. Credit: Los Angeles Times
Note: This is an encore post from 2011.
In the novel “Letty Lynton” and the play “Dishonored Lady,” the heroine gets away with murder, thanks to lies of friends. In the cinema world, however, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer earned major punishment for plagiarizing the play. It was assessed huge monetary damages and saw its film “Letty Lynton” forever removed from circulation. It didn’t have to end that way.
Playwrights Edward Sheldon and Margaret Ayer Barnes wrote the play “Dishonored Lady,” based on the 1857 murder trial of Scottish Madeleine Smith, who murdered her lover. It opened 1930 in New York to tremendous success. MGM negotiated twice to acquire the play’s screen rights, but both times the Will Hays Production Code Office nixed production because of immorality. The studio instead bought the rights to novelist Marie Belloc Lowndes’ book “Letty Lynton,” also based on the same story as the play. Studio Creative Chief Irving Thalberg desired the story for Joan Crawford, who played coarser, tougher roles than most of the MGM starlets.
From the California State Archives
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Clearly it’s no more possible to control the gags about the quiz show scandal than it is to control the mushrooming scandal itself, and the other day a group of coffee break philosophers of my acquaintance got around to the subject.
It’s an axiom thought up by Sir Isaac Newton and perpetuated by Hollywood:
From the California State Archives.
“Heavy skirts and long trains worn on the streets are especially unhealthful. Heavy skirts strain the delicate internal organs and long trains gather up all kinds of impurities and disease germs and distribute them on the hosiery and underclothes, to be carried to the skin and then through the pores into the blood.”
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and 
In Paris, 
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and 
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and 
ladailymirror.com 