An illuminating glimpse at the colorful and often scandalous…
Actress Jeanne Eagels
In 1929 Jeanne Eagels was nominated for a best actress Oscar for The Letter after she died earlier that year at age thirty-nine from alcohol and heroin complications. Eagels had started as a Ziegfield Follies girl, but her talent and beauty soon moved her from the chorus line to center stage. Tabloids of the time followed her progress and her secret marriage to a Yale football star, and they especially liked her temper, her no-shows, and her quitting plays whenever she felt like it. At one point she was banned from appearing on stage by Actors Equity, which had forced her to move to Hollywood to make the “talkie” The Letter, one of the first films that showed the true dramatic possibilities of audio in cinema. In the fall of 1929 she checked into a private drying-out hospital in New York City a week before the stock market crashed; unfortunately she left via the morgue.
