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Moran of the Lady Letty was a successful attempt to establish "Latin Lover" Rudolph Valentino as a brawling he-man hero (both this film and Valentino's breakthrough picture The Sheik were directed by George Melford). Rudy plays a Spanish aristocrat who is shanghaied by burly ship's captain Walter Long, the head of a smuggling gang. While at sea, Valentino rescues a young man from a burning vessel. The young man turns out to be a young woman (Dorothy Dalton), who had earlier spurned Valentino in his pampered-aristocrat days. Rudy tries to conceal the girl's identity from the lustful Long, but soon the truth is out, setting the stage for a bloody mano-y-mano battle between hero and villain. Moran of the Lady Letty was based on a novel by Frank Norris, whose best-known work McTeague was filmed by Erich Von Stroheim as Greed (1924).