The Letter
After a woman shoots a man to death, a damning letter she wrote raises suspicions.
Acting
British stage actor James Stephenson made his film debut quite late in life, at the age of 49, in 1937, making four pictures that year. Warner Bros. got a glimpse of this distinguished gent and signed him to a contract where he indulged himself in urbane villainy. Proving a reliable support in such films as Boy Meets Girl (1938), You Can't Get Away with Murder (1939), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), and the classic adventure The Sea Hawk (1940), he was entrusted by director William Wyler and mega-star Bette Davis to play the sympathetic role of the family attorney Howard Joyce in The Letter (1940). It was the role of a lifetime and he didn't let them down for he earned an Oscar nomination in the process. Stephenson was soon on a roll, playing the titular sleuth in Calling Philo Vance (1940) and was first-billed in the above-average "B" movie Shining Victory (1941) when he died suddenly in 1941 of a heart attack at the rather young age of 53.
Date of Death: 29 July 1941, Pacific Palisades, California (heart attack)
Browse movies and TV shows featuring James Stephenson
After a woman shoots a man to death, a damning letter she wrote raises suspicions.
Dashing pirate Geoffrey Thorpe plunders Spanish ships for Queen Elizabeth I and falls in love with Dona Maria,...
Brothers Beau, John and Digby Geste join the Foreign Legion, where they fall under the rule of tyrannical Serge...
This period drama frames the tumultuous affair between Queen Elizabeth I and the man who would be King of Engla...
When Barry Corvall discovers that his new bride is a possible enemy agent, he resigns from the diplomatic servi...
A San Francisco astrologer correctly predicts a ship passenger's death and then helps the police look for the m...
Physician Carole Nelson, suspected of having ties to notorious gangster Joe Gurney, must prove her innocence or...
The lives of two cousins are complicated by the return of an ex-boyfriend and an illegitimate child.
FBI agent Ed Renard investigates the pre-War espionage activities of the German-American Bund.
An escaped criminal pretends to be a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in order to prove his innocenc...
Greedy diamond mine owner Eli Snedeker, resentful that his ex-foreman John Gamble stopped him from taking over...
The true story of the exploits of the RAF's (Royal Air Force) foreign legion battling the German Luftwaffe (Naz...
An ambitious attorney (Edward Norris) tries to prove a man (John Litel) who killed to protect his wife's (Marga...
After his doctor informs him he will die in six months, Professor Henry Todhunter decides to spend his last day...
Two lazy screenwriters need a story for the studio's cowboy star. A studio waitress turns out to be pregnant. T...
A New York attorney defends a young man with a criminal past who has been accused of murdering a police inspect...
Torchy Blane joins her police-detective fiance to solve a series of murders involving a set of Chinese grave ta...
In a Scottish sanitarium, a brilliant research psychiatrist works on a treatment for dementia praecox. He falls...
A French doctor sentenced for treason performs brain surgery on the prison commandant's daughter.
Brass Bancroft and his sidekick Gabby Watters are recruited onto the secret service and go undercover to crack...
The story of President Monroe's response to attempts by Spain to interfere in South America.
A homeless woman named Hannah drifts into the lives of the kindly Ward family, in a small Indiana town in 1919....
After a wealthy dowager who has made a substantial donation to her alma mater suddenly disappears, Nancy Drew s...
A British doctor and his son's Austrian governess have an affair and are accused of killing his wife.
Set during the American Revolution, this colorful 2 reel short tells the story of Haym Salomon, American patrio...
A two-fisted Canadian Mountie leads lawmen in pursuit of the thieves who stole an Edmonton-bound freighter's ca...
German Julius Reuter sends 19th-century news by carrier pigeon and then by wire, founding a news agency.
A singing cowboy turns out to be a tenderfoot.
“Professional jealousy over the discovery of a formula for an anaesthetic leads to murder in a hospital.” - BFI.
Reporter Jane Arden goes undercover to try to expose a gang of jewel thieves and smugglers. Her mission becomes...
Enemy agents are everywhere and they are sabotaging all important war deliveries. The body of a hobo found in a...
Philo is in Vienna working for the US Government to see if Archer Coe is selling aircraft designs to foreign po...
Max Miller plays a boxer's manager who fails to get fights for his simple-minded boxer. The manager sets up a s...
American chorus-girl Mamie Wallace (Farrell) travels to Paris with a ramshackle touring musical revue. The comp...
“Professor Calthrop, actuated only by scientific motives, and his assistant, out for his own gain, have invente...