Joan Bennett

**Joan Geraldine Bennett** (February 27, 1910 – December 7, 1990) was an Emmy-nominated American movie actress who appeared in more than 70 Hollywood movies from the silent era to talkies, from color to the advent of television and epic movies. She may be best known and loved for her film noir movies femme fatale roles in movies by director Fritz Lang.

## Biography

Joan Bennett had three distinct phases to her long and successful career, first as a charming blonde ingenue, then as a brunette femme fatale and, finally, as a warm-hearted wife/mother figure.

### Early life

Born in Palisades, N.J., she was part of a famous theatrical family with a lineage dating back to traveling minstrels in 18th century England. Her father was actor Richard Bennett, her mother, actress Adrienne Morrison, and her sisters, actress Constance Bennett and dancer, Barbara Bennett. Joan first acted onstage with her father at age 18 and by 19 had become a movie star courtesy of her roles in such movies as _Bulldog Drummond_ (1929) and _Disraeli_ (1929). She moved quickly from movie to movie throughout the 1930s, appearing with John Barrymore in his version of _Moby Dick_ (1930) and playing Amy to Katharine Hepburn's Jo in _Little Women_ (1933). Of the three Bennett sisters, Joan would achieve the greatest fame.

### Career

Contracted to 20th Century Fox, Joan Bennett appeared as a blonde ingenue in several movies including _Puttin' on the Ritz_ in 1930 and _Me and My Gal_ in 1932, before leaving this studio to appear in _Little Women_ (1933). The latter movie brought Bennett to the attention of producer Walter Wanger, who signed her to a contract and eventually (in 1940) married her.

Wanger managed Bennett's career, and with director Tay Garnett convinced her to change her hair from blonde (her natural color) to brunette. With this change her screen persona evolved into that of a glamorous seductive, femme fatale and she began to attract attention in a series of highly acclaimed film noirs by director Fritz Lang. During the search to find an actress to play Scarlett O'Hara in _Gone with the Wind_, Bennett was tested and impressed producer David O. Selznick. She was briefly considered to be a front runner for this part but Selznick eventually turned his attention to Paulette Goddard, who was then rejected in favour of Vivien Leigh.

In the 1940s Bennett appeared in four movies directed by Fritz Lang with whom she and Wanger had formed their own movie company. Three of these movies, _Man Hunt_ (1941), _The Woman in the Window_ (1945), and _Scarlet Street_ (1945) established her as a film noir femme fatale and leading Hollywood actress. She also worked with noted directors Jean Renoir in _The Woman on the Beach_ (1947) and Max Ophüls in _The Reckless Moment_. Other highlights of the more mature phase of her career include the role of Spencer Tracy's wife and Elizabeth Taylor's mother in both _Father of the Bride_ (1950) and _Father's Little Dividend_ (1951).

### Scandal & later years

In 1950, Bennett changed agents. In 1951, Wanger shot and injured Bennett's new MCA agent, Jennings Lang (1915-1996), with whom she had allegedly begun an affair. The resulting scandal hurt her career much more than Wanger's, according to the double standards toward women of the time. Wanger's attorney, Jerry Giesler, mounted a "temporary insanity" defense and Wanger served a four-month sentence at the Castaic Honor Farm two hours' drive north of Los Angeles, quickly returning to his movie career to make a string of intelligent hit movies. Bennett, meanwhile was forced to flee to Chicago to appear in theater, and later in television because the scandal was too great a stain on her movie career and the movie studios were already floundering in the 1950s as it was. Though Humphrey Bogart, a longtime friend of Bennett's, pleaded with the studios on her behalf to keep her role in _We're No Angels_ following the shooting scandal, that movie proved to be one of Bennett's last. Wanger and Bennett remained married until 1965.

Bennett continued to work steadily in theatre and television and was a cast member of the television series _Dark Shadows_ for its entire five year run, from 1966 until 1971, receiving an Emmy Award nomination for her performance therein.  Bennett also appeared in a few more movies, most notably the cult horror thriller from Italian director Dario Argento's _Suspiria_. In the last decades of her life, she was married to David Wilde, a Yale graduate and movie critic. Bennett died from a heart attack in Scarsdale, New York at the age of 80, and was buried in Pleasant View Cemetery, Lyme, Connecticut.

Joan Bennett was survived by 4 daughters (Diana Fox, Melinda Markey, and Shelley and Stephanie Wanger) and 13 grandchildren.

Bennett has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for services to Motion Pictures, at 6310 Hollywood Boulevard.

## Filmography

- _The Valley of Decision_ (1916)
- _The Eternal City_ (1923)
- _Power_ (1928)
- _The Divine Lady_ (1929)
- _Bulldog Drummond_ (1929)
- _Three Live Ghosts_ (1929)
- _Disraeli_ (1929)
- _The Mississippi Gambler_ (1929)
- _Puttin' on the Ritz_ (1930)
- _Crazy That Way_ (1930)
- _Moby Dick_ (1930)
- _Maybe It's Love_ (1930)
- _Scotland Yard_ (1930)
- _Many a Slip_ (1931)
- _Doctors' Wives_ (1931)
- _Hush Money_ (1931)
- _She Wanted a Millionaire_ (1932)
- _Careless Lady_ (1932)
- _The Trial of Vivienne Ware_ (1932)
- _Week Ends Only_ (1932)
- _Wild Girl_ (1932)
- _Me and My Gal_ (1932)
- _Arizona to Broadway_ (1933)
- _Little Women_ (1933)
- _The Pursuit of Happiness_ (1934)
- _The Man Who Reclaimed His Head_ (1934)
- _Private Worlds_ (1935)
- _Mississippi_ (1935)
- _Two for Tonight_ (1935)
- _She Couldn't Take It_ (1935)
- _The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo_ (1935)
- _Big Brown Eyes_ (1936)
- _Thirteen Hours by Air_ (1936)
- _Two in a Crowd_ (1936)
- _Wedding Present_ (1936)
- _Vogues of 1938_ (1937)
- _I Met My Love Again_ (1938)

- _The Texans_ (1938)
- _Artists and Models Abroads_ (1938)
- _Trade Winds_ (1938)
- _The Man in the Iron Mask_ (1939)
- _The Housekeeper's Daughter_ (1939)
- _Green Hell_ (1940)
- _The House Across the Bay_ (1940)
- _The Man I Married_ (1940)
- _The Son of Monte Cristo_ (1940)
- _She Knew All the Answers_ (1941)
- _Man Hunt_ (1941)
- _Wild Geese Calling_ (1941)
- _Confirm or Deny_ (1941)
- _The Wife Takes a Flyer_ (1942)
- _Twin Beds_ (1942)
- _Girl Trouble_ (1942)
- _Margin of Error_ (1943)
- _The Woman in the Window_ (1944)
- _Nob Hill_ (1945)
- _Scarlet Street_ (1945)
- _Colonel Effingham's Raid_ (1946)
- _The Macomber Affair_ (1947)
- _The Woman on the Beach_ (1947)
- _Secret Beyond the Door.._ (1948)
- _Hollow Triumph_ (1948)
- _The Reckless Moment_ (1949)
- _Father of the Bride_ (1950)
- _For Heaven's Sake_ (1950)
- _Father's Little Dividend_ (1951)
- _The Guy Who Came Back_ (1951)
- _Highway Dragnet_ (1954)
- _We're No Angels_ (1955)
- _There's Always Tomorrow_ (1956)
- _Navy Wife_ (1956)
- _Desire in the Dust_ (1960)
- _House of Dark Shadows_ (1970)
- _Suspiria_ (1977)

### Short subjects

- _Screen Snapshots_ (1932)
- _The Fashion Side of Hollywood_ (1935)
- _Hollywood Party_ (1937)
- _Hedda Hopper's Hollywood No. 6_ (1942)

## Other websites

- Profile @ Turner Classic Movies
- Joan Geraldine Bennett
- Photographs of Joan Bennett
- Article on Walter Wanger shooting Jennings Lang

## Infobox (actor)

- **name**: Joan Bennett
- **image**: Joan Bennett in The Woman in the Window trailer.jpg
- **caption**: from the trailer for _The Woman in the Window_ (1944)
- **birthname**: Joan Geraldine Bennett
- **birth place**: Palisades Park, New Jersey
- **death place**: Scarsdale, New York
- **yearsactive**: 1916–1982
- **spouse**: John Marion Fox (1926–1928)
Gene Markey (1932–1937)
Walter Wanger (1940–1965)
David Wilde (1978–1990)