Letty Lynton (1932)

Living in South America, a woman (Joan Crawford) is seeking to escape from her toxic lover (Nils Asther). Fleeing to New York aboard a luxury liner, she falls in love with a passenger (Robert Montgomery) and sees a new beginning for her. Alas, when the ship docks, her obsessive lover is waiting to meet her. Based on the novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes (THE LODGER) and directed by Clarence Brown (NATIONAL VELVET). Out of circulation since 1936 due to a court decision that the screenplay plagiarized the play DISHONORED LADY. The play's copyright expired in 2025 and after years of unavailability, the film has been restored and made available. Its reputation has grown because of its being out of circulation for decades. The movie is far from a great movie but it still holds up as a pulpy pre code movie romance and being a pre code film, the heroine is able to get away with murder and live happily ever after. The young Joan Crawford is really marvelous here (and a knockout in her Adrian frocks), vibrant and sexy and not yet the iron maiden she would become over at Warner Brothers. With May Robson, Lewis Stone and Louise Closser Hale.