The Letter is a grand love story and thrilling melodrama set against the background of far off Malay.

Merle Oberon plays the part of Leslie Crosbie the wife of a rubber plantation owner in Singapore on the Malay peninsular who kills a man she purports to be a thief. However Leslie did know the victim, he was Geoffrey Hammond (Ralph Forbes) a man she had been engaged to when she lived in England and Leslie had sent for him by letter on the night of the murder, a letter that would later turn up and could incriminate her.

Walter Huston plays the role of her Leslie’s devoted husband Robert Crosbie, and Eric Snowden plays the part of Lawyer and good friend Howard Joyce.

Written by: William Somerset Maugham