Joan Bennett rose to fame during the golden age of the Hollywood studio system, but a scandal had basically ended her movie career in 1951, leaving her with few professional options besides working in television or on stage.
Joan was born into an acting family—with theatrical roots dating back to the 1700s. Although at first she was shy, and at times felt overshadowed by her glamorous older sister, Constance Bennett, Joan did gravitate toward the stage, making her debut a age 4 in one of her father's plays. The next year, 1916, she appeared in her first film, The Valley of
… More Decision , with both of her parents (Richard Bennett and Adrienne Morrison).
Joan attended St. Margaret's, a boarding school in Connecticut and a finishing school in France. Her formal education ended abruptly, however, when at 16 she married John Marion Fox. By 17, she had a daughter; by 18, she was divorced.
The young mother turned to acting to support herself and found enormous success. Her first starring role was in Bulldog Drummond with Ronald Coleman in 1929. For the next twenty-one years, she was a favorite of critics and audiences, making over 50 more films, including Little Women (1933), Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street (1945), and Father of the Bride (1950). (Along the way, she was married and divorced again; she and writer/producer Gene Markey were married from 1932 to '38.)
She was among the army of young actresses competing for the plum part of Scarlett O'Hara in 1939's Gone With the Wind—and was reportedly Vivian Leigh's first runner-up. Even though she didn't get that coveted role, she was a busy, successful actress.
But a gunshot brought a screeching halt to Joan's movie stardom in 1951. While she and her agent, Jennings Lang, sat in a parked car in Los Angeles, Joan's husband producer Walter Wanger showed up with a pistol, accused Lang of being a home-wrecker, and shot him in the groin. The agent, who denied any hanky panky with his client, recovered, and Wanger served 100 days at a minimum-security prison. But the Wanger/Bennett marriage was over, and for a while it seemed her career would end as well.
Though the shooting seems fairly tame by today's standards, in the conservative 1950s environment, it was one of the most scandalous episodes to hit Hollywood.
With no movie offers, she returned to her first love, the stage, in such productions as a touring company of Bell Book and Candle. And on television, Joan built up her credibility as an actress. In 1957, New York Journal-American columnist Jack O'Brian took note of her performance in a Playhouse 90 episode titled "The Thundering Wave."
"Miss Bennett hit a peak of performance which was frankly surprising; always we'd seen her as an actress who'd sort of chugged along on glamour through the years. Now talent is plainly apparent."
Bennett and Wanger separated after he left prison, and divorced in 1965 after 25 years of marriage.
In 1966, she took the unusual step of joining the cast of a soap opera. To her surprise, it made her incredibly popular again. In its early weeks, as Dark Shadows developed its unusual tone, the show was primarily known as "that soap opera starring Joan Bennett." The beautiful movie legend brought much-needed star power and publicity to the fledgling series.
While Dark Shadows was on the air, Joan, then a grandmother, was the subject of countless magazine articles, and she was even featured on bubble gum cards and a View-Master set. She was an in-demand talk show guest, and fan mail poured in for her.
After the show left the air, she made a few TV appearances, and one final film: Suspiria, a 1977 gory horror movie.
At age 68, she married former newspaper publisher David Wilde.
Though she was quite frail in her later years, Joan attended several Dark Shadows Festivals, greeting fans and signing autographs. She died December 7, 1990 of a heart attack. --Craig Hamrick
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