Movie Time Capsule: Jeanne Eagels

Jeanne Eagels’ performance on Broadway in the 1920s as prostitute Sadie Thompson in the Somerset Maugham melodrama “Rain” won her wide renown. She’s just as famous for her diva behavior and her alcohol and drug abuse. Though known for her stage roles, Eagels also made a handful of films. She scored a huge hit with her first talkie, the 1929 Maugham drama “The Letter,” which has just come out on DVD. Eagels plays Leslie Crosbie, a married woman on a rubber plantation who shoots her lover. Eagels died Oct. 3, 1929, at 39 of an alleged drug overdose. She earned the first posthumous acting Oscar nomination.