Joan Crawford in Letty Lynton

Letty Lynton (1932) is a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer motion picture starring Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery, and Nils Asther, and directed by Clarence Brown. The film is based on a 1931 novel by Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes. In the film, Crawford plays the title character, in a tale of love and blackmail. The film has since become famous due to its unavailability.This film has been unavailable since a US Federal court ruled on 17 January 1936 that the script used by MGM followed too closely the play Dishonored Lady (1930) by Edward Sheldon and Margaret Ayer Barnes without acquiring the rights to the play or giving credit. On 28 July 1939, the US Second Court of Appeals awarded one-fifth of the net of Letty Lynton to plaintiffs Sheldon and Ayer Barnes in their plagiarism action against MGM. This case was said to be the first copyright decision ever to direct the apportionment of profits on the relative basis as in patent suits where a patent has been appropriated.On 7 November 1939, MGM petitioned the United States Supreme Court to overturn the Court of Appeals ruling, stating that the questions arising in the suit were predicated solely upon the copyright laws of the U.S., and not the patent laws. However, MGM did not prevail in this latter action, and the film is unavailable even to this day.