Joan Bennett

Early life and family

Joan Geraldine Bennett was born in the Palisade section of Fort Lee, New Jersey, on February 27, 1910, the youngest of three daughters of actor Richard Bennett and actress and literary agent Adrienne Morrison. Joan's parents had expected her to be a boy and had agreed on the name John, after her father's character John Shand in his hit play What Every Woman Knows with actress Maude Adams. She later said, "I guess I was forgiven for emerging as a female since father declared later I was 'a rosebud blooming in the sun and it was love at first sight.' As for my name, Maude Adams's Scottish-accented pronunciation of 'John' was very close to 'Joan' and the matter was settled in that way." She was given the middle name Geraldine after the Bennetts' lawyer, Gerald Stalter.

Her elder sisters were actress Constance Bennett, who was the mother of sculptor Lorinda Roland, and actress and dancer Barbara Bennett, who was the first wife of singer Morton Downey and the mother of Morton Downey Jr..

Bennett's father was the first member of his family to become a professional actor. Her paternal ancestors, the Bennetts, were sawmill operators. According to Joan, her great-great-grandfather Moses Bennett started the family tradition of becoming a preacher: "He became one of the class of unordained, lay preachers known as community circuit riders, who traveled the surrounding country on horseback and, without fee, preached for the glory of God and the salvation of men." She believed acting came naturally to her father because "the Bennetts were powerful speakers and given to histrionics in the pulpit", noting that "a good preacher also had to be a good actor."

On her mother's side, Bennett was the fifth generation of a family of actors. The first actor in her family was her great-great-grandfather William Wodin (b. c. 1770), a Welshman who moved to London, changed his surname to Wood, and became a strolling player. His son, William F. Wood (b. 1799), Bennett's great-grandfather, specialized in pantomime. The younger William married a Scottish dancer named Sarah Campbell, a descendant of the Duke of Argyll. William, Sarah, and their two sons relocated to New York in 1838. Their daughter, Rosabel "Rose" Wood (b. 1845), Bennett's maternal grandmother, became an actress and dancer. In 1865, Rose married Jamaica-born actor Lewis Morrison, Bennett's maternal grandfather, the son of an English planter and a woman of Spanish descent. The Morrisons acted in Shakespearean plays, Restoration comedies, and popular dramas of the time.

Career

Blonde roles

Bennett's stage debut was at age 18, acting with her father in Jarnegan (1928), which ran on Broadway for 136 performances and for which she received good reviews. By the time she turned 20 she had become a movie star through such roles as Phyllis Benton in Bulldog Drummond starring Ronald Colman, which was her first important role, and Lady Clarissa Pevensey opposite George Arliss in Disraeli (both 1929).

She moved quickly from movie to movie throughout the 1930s. Bennett appeared as a blonde (her natural hair color) for several years. She starred in the role of Dolores Fenton in the United Artists musical Puttin' On The Ritz (1930) opposite Harry Richman and as Faith Mapple, Captain Ahab Ceely's beloved, opposite John Barrymore in an early sound version of Moby Dick (1930) at Warner Brothers.

Under contract to Fox Film Corporation, she appeared in several movies. She played the role of Jane Miller opposite Spencer Tracy in She Wanted a Millionaire (1932), receiving top billing. She was billed second, after Tracy, for her role as Helen Riley, a personable waitress who trades wisecracks, in Me and My Gal (1932).

Bennett left Fox to play Amy March, a pert sister competing with Katharine Hepburn's Jo in Little Women (1933), which was directed by George Cukor for RKO. This movie brought Bennett to the attention of independent film producer Walter Wanger, who signed her to a contract and began managing her career. She played the role of Sally MacGregor, a psychiatrist's young wife slipping into insanity, in Private Worlds (1935) with Joel McCrea who played her husband Dr. Alex MacGregor. Bennett starred in the film Vogues of 1938 (1937), including the title sequence, in which she donned a diamond-and-platinum bracelet set with the Star of Burma ruby. Wanger and director Tay Garnett persuaded her to change her hair from blonde to brunette as part of the plot for her role as Kay Kerrigan in the scenic Trade Winds (1938) opposite Fredric March.

Brunette roles

With her change in appearance, Bennett began an entirely new screen career as her persona evolved into that of a glamorous, seductive femme fatale. She played the role of Princess Maria Theresa in The Man in the Iron Mask (1939) opposite Louis Hayward, and the role of the Grand Duchess Zona of Lichtenburg in The Son of Monte Cristo (1940) opposite Hayward.

During his search for an actress to play Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, producer David O. Selznick asked Bennett if she could make a screen test. She agreed because Scarlett was "such a plum role". She worked on her Southern accent for several weeks with dialogue director Bill Price. Bennett's test consisted of three scenes, and she impressed Selznick to such an extent that she became one of the four actresses who were tested in color, along with Jean Arthur, Paulette Goddard, and Vivien Leigh. According to Bennett, she and Leigh were Selznick's last two choices, but he sent her a letter that read, "The Scarlett hour has arrived; and the decision, unfortunately, is against our Joanie. I am more grateful than I can say for your effort, which was magnificent."

Combined with her sultry eyes and husky voice, Bennett's new brunette look gave her an earthier, more arresting persona. She won praise for her performances as Brenda Bentley in The House Across the Bay (1940), also featuring George Raft, and as Carol Hoffman in the anti-Nazi drama The Man I Married, a film in which Francis Lederer also starred.

Bennett's first film for Fritz Lang was the 20th Century-Fox production Man Hunt (1941), co-starring Walter Pidgeon. She considered Lang "the incomparable director" and described Man Hunt as "a circumstance that would be an important boost for me as an actress." She was cast as a Cockney woman named Jerry Stokes, and for weeks before filming began she practiced her accent with English actress Queenie Leonard. Bennett later said, "It was the only movie I ever made in which I knew the entire script, like a play, beforehand." In her autobiography, she wrote about her working relationship with Lang: Fritz was terribly exacting and demanding and working with him was sometimes abrasive, but he commanded great respect, and I performed better under his direction than at any other time in my career. Almost always I did what I was told, and we developed a great working rapport.

Bennett was Henry Fonda's leading lady in Wild Geese Calling (1941). Lang was going to direct Bennett again in the 20th Century-Fox film Confirm or Deny (1941), but he quarreled with the studio heads and walked out after one week of filming. She played the female leads in three comedies released in 1942: The Wife Takes a Flyer, with Franchot Tone; Twin Beds, with George Brent; and Girl Trouble, with Don Ameche. Otto Preminger directed her in the drama Margin for Error (1943).

Blacklisting

Bennett made only five movies in the decade that followed the 1951 shooting incident, and only two films in the 1970s, for the incident was a stain on her career and she became virtually blacklisted. Blaming the scandal that occurred for destroying her career in the motion picture industry, Bennett once said, "I might as well have pulled the trigger myself." Although Humphrey Bogart, a longtime friend, pleaded with Paramount Pictures on her behalf to keep her after her role as Amelie Ducotel in We're No Angels (1955).

As the movie offers dwindled after the scandal, Bennett continued touring in stage successes, such as Susan and God, Once More, with Feeling, The Pleasure of His Company and Never Too Late. Her next TV appearance was in the role of Bettina Blane in "You Are Only Young Once", an episode of General Electric Theater in 1954. Other roles included Honora in Climax! (1955) and Vickie Maxwell in Playhouse 90 (1957). In 1958, she appeared as Mary Blake, the mother to teenagers Pam (Brigid Bazlen) and Johnny (Martin Huston) in the short-lived television comedy/drama Too Young to Go Steady. She starred on Broadway in the comedy Love Me Little (1958), which ran for only eight performances.

Of the scandal, in a 1981 interview, Bennett contrasted the judgmental 1950s with the sensation-crazed 1970s and 1980s. "It would never happen that way today," she said, laughing. "If it happened today, I'd be a sensation. I'd be wanted by all studios for all pictures."

TV and final roles

Despite the shooting scandal and the damage it caused Bennett's film career, she and Wanger remained married until 1965. She continued to work steadily on the stage and in television, including a guest role as Denise Mitchell in "Who Killed Mr. Colby in Ladies' Lingerie?", an episode of TV's Burke's Law (1965).

Bennett received star billing in the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows for its entire five-year run, 1966 to 1971, receiving an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Achievement in Daytime Programming at the 20th Primetime Emmy Awards in 1968 for her performance as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, mistress of the haunted Collinwood Mansion. Her other roles in Dark Shadows were Naomi Collins, Judith Collins Trask, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard PT (parallel time, as the show described its alternate reality), Flora Collins, and Flora Collins PT. In 1970, she appeared as Elizabeth in House of Dark Shadows, the feature film adaptation of the series. However, she declined to appear in the sequel Night of Dark Shadows, and her character Elizabeth was mentioned therein as being recently deceased.

Her other TV guest appearances include Bennett's roles as Joan Darlene Delaney in 'Check the Check", an episode of The Governor & J.J. (1970) and as Edith in "Love and the Second Time", an episode of Love, American Style (1971). She starred in five made-for-TV movies between 1972 and 1982.

Bennett also appeared in one more feature film, as Madame Blanc in director Dario Argento's horror film Suspiria (1977), for which she received a 1978 Saturn Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Personal life

On September 15, 1926, 16-year-old Bennett married John M. Fox in London. They divorced in Los Angeles on July 30, 1928, based on charges of his alcoholism. They had one child, Adrienne Ralston Fox (born February 20, 1928), for whom Bennett fought successfully in court to rename Diana Bennett Markey when the child was eight years old (she had married Gene Markey in 1932), and the child's name was changed to Diana Bennett Wanger in 1944 after her mother married Walter Wanger in 1940.

On March 16, 1932, she married screenwriter/film producer Gene Markey in Los Angeles, but the couple divorced in Los Angeles on June 3, 1937. They had one child, Melinda Markey (born February 27, 1934, on Bennett's 24th birthday).

On January 12, 1940, Bennett and producer Walter Wanger were married in Phoenix, Arizona. They were divorced in September 1965 in Mexico. The couple had two children together, Stephanie Wanger (born June 26, 1943) and Shelley Wanger (born July 4, 1948). The following year, on March 13, 1949, Bennett became a grandmother at age 39.

Scandal

For 12 years, Bennett was represented by agent Jennings Lang, the onetime vice-president of the Sam Jaffe Agency, who then headed MCA's West Coast television operations. She and Lang met on the afternoon of December 13, 1951, to talk over an upcoming TV show.

Bennett parked her Cadillac convertible in the lot at the back of the MCA offices, at Santa Monica Boulevard and Rexford Drive, across the street from the Beverly Hills Police Department, and she and Lang drove off in his car. Meanwhile, her husband Walter Wanger drove past about 2:30 p.m. and noticed his wife's car parked there. Half an hour later, he again saw her car there and stopped to wait. Bennett and Lang drove into the parking lot a few hours later and he walked her to her convertible. As she started the engine, turned on the headlights, and prepared to drive away, Lang leaned on the car, with both hands raised to his shoulders, and talked to her.

In a fit of jealousy, Wanger walked up and twice shot and wounded the unsuspecting agent. One bullet hit Jennings in the right thigh, near the hip, and the other penetrated his groin. Bennett said she did not see Wanger at first. She said she suddenly saw two vivid flashes, then Lang slumped to the ground. As soon as she recognized who had fired the shots, she told Wanger, "Get away and leave us alone." He tossed the pistol into his wife's car.

She and the parking lot's service station manager took Lang to the agent's doctor. He was then taken to a hospital, where he recovered. The police station was located across the lot, officers had heard the shots, and came to the scene and found the gun in Bennett's car when they took Wanger into custody. Wanger was booked and fingerprinted, and underwent lengthy questioning.

"I shot him because I thought he was breaking up my home," Wanger told Clinton Anderson, the police chief of Beverly Hills. He was booked on suspicion of assault with intent to commit murder. Bennett denied a romance. "But if Walter thinks the relationships between Mr. Lang and myself are romantic or anything but strictly business, he is wrong," she declared. She blamed the trouble on financial setbacks involving film productions Wanger was involved with, and said he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The following day Wanger, out on bond, returned to their Holmby Hills home, collected his belongings and moved out. Bennett, however, said there would not be a divorce.

Political views

She was a very active member of both the Hollywood Democratic Committee and The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and donated her time and money to many liberal causes (such as the Civil Rights Movement) and political candidates (including Franklin D. Roosevelt, Henry A. Wallace, Adlai Stevenson II, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Jimmy Carter) during her lifetime.

Later years and death

Bennett's autobiography The Bennett Playbill, written with Lois Kibbee, was published in 1970.

Bennett and retired publisher/movie critic David Wilde were married on February 14, 1978, 13 days before her 68th birthday, in White Plains, New York. Their marriage lasted until her death in 1990.

Celebrated for not taking herself too seriously, Bennett said in a 1986 interview, "I don't think much of most of the films I made, but being a movie star was something I liked very much."

Bennett died of heart failure on Friday evening, December 7, 1990, aged 80, at her home in Scarsdale, New York.

Legacy

Bennett has a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the film industry. Her star is located at 6300 Hollywood Boulevard, a short distance from the star of her sister Constance.

Filmography

Bennett appeared in many movies and television productions, listed below in their entirety.

Made-for-TV movies

Gidget Gets Married (1972) as Claire Ramsey

The Eyes of Charles Sand (1972) as Aunt Alexandra

Suddenly, Love (1978) as Mrs. Graham

This House Possessed (1981) as Rag Lady

Divorce Wars: A Love Story (1982) as Adele Burgess

Short subject

Screen Snapshots (1932)

Hollywood on Parade No. A-12 (1933)

The Fashion Side of Hollywood (1935)

Hollywood Party (1937)

Screen Snapshots Series 19, No. 9: Sports in Hollywood (1940)

Hedda Hopper's Hollywood, No. 6 (1942)

Screen Actors (1950) (uncredited)