1. Joan Geraldine Bennett was an American stage, film, and television actress, one of three acting sisters from a show-business family.
39 Facts About Joan Bennett
1. 2.
Joan Bennett's career had three distinct phases: first as a winsome blonde ingenue, then as a sensuous brunette femme fatale, and finally as a warmhearted wife-and-mother figure.
3.
Part of a famous theatrical family, Joan Bennett's maternal grandfather was Jamaica-born Shakespearean actor Lewis Morrison, who embarked on a stage career in the late 1860s.
4.
Joan Bennett first appeared in a silent movie as a child with her parents and sisters in her father's drama The Valley of Decision, which he adapted for the screen.
5.
Joan Bennett attended Miss Hopkins School for Girls in Manhattan, then St Margaret's, a boarding school in Waterbury, Connecticut, and L'Hermitage, a finishing school in Versailles, France.
6.
On September 15,1926,16-year-old Bennett married John M Fox in London.
7.
Joan Bennett's name changed to Diana Bennett Wanger in 1944.
8.
Joan Bennett moved quickly from movie to movie throughout the 1930s.
9.
Joan Bennett appeared as a blonde for several years.
10.
Joan Bennett played the role of Jane Miller opposite Spencer Tracy in Joan Bennett Wanted a Millionaire, receiving top billing.
11.
Joan Bennett was billed second, after Tracy, for her role as Helen Riley, a personable waitress who trades wisecracks, in Me and My Gal.
12.
Joan Bennett left Fox to play Amy, a pert sister competing with Katharine Hepburn's Jo in Little Women, which was directed by George Cukor for RKO.
13.
Joan Bennett played the role of Sally MacGregor, a psychiatrist's young wife slipping into insanity, in Private Worlds with Joel McCrea.
14.
Joan Bennett starred in the film Vogues of 1938, including the title sequence, in which she donned a diamond-and-platinum bracelet set with the Star of Burma ruby.
15.
Joan Bennett played the role of Princess Maria Theresa in The Man in the Iron Mask opposite Louis Hayward, and the role of the Grand Duchess Zona of Lichtenburg in The Son of Monte Cristo opposite Hayward.
16.
Joan Bennett won praise for her performances as Brenda Bentley in The House Across the Bay, featuring George Raft, and as Carol Hoffman in the anti-Nazi drama The Man I Married, a film in which Francis Lederer starred.
17.
Joan Bennett then appeared in a sequence of highly regarded film noir thrillers directed by Fritz Lang, with whom she and Wanger formed their own production company.
18.
Joan Bennett was the shrewish, cuckolding wife, Margaret Macomber, in Zoltan Korda's The Macomber Affair opposite Gregory Peck, as deceitful wife Peggy, in Jean Renoir's The Woman on the Beach opposite Robert Ryan and Charles Bickford, and as tormented Lucia Harper in Max Ophuls' The Reckless Moment as the victim of a blackmailer played by James Mason.
19.
Joan Bennett made a number of radio appearances from the 1930s to the 1950s, performing on such programs as The Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show, Duffy's Tavern, The Jack Benny Program, Ford Theater, Suspense and the anthology series Lux Radio Theater and Screen Guild Theater.
20.
Joan Bennett 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 and political candidates during her lifetime.
21.
For 12 years Joan 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.
22.
Joan 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.
23.
Joan Bennett said she suddenly saw two vivid flashes, then Lang slumped to the ground.
24.
Joan Bennett was then taken to a hospital, where he recovered.
25.
Joan Bennett was booked on suspicion of assault with intent to commit murder.
26.
Joan Bennett blamed the trouble on financial setbacks involving film productions Wanger was involved with, and said he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
27.
Joan Bennett read the prepared statement in the bedroom of her home to a group of newspapermen while TV cameras recorded the scene.
28.
Joan Bennett then decided to waive his right to a jury, and threw himself on the mercy of the court.
29.
Meanwhile, Joan Bennett went to Chicago to appear on the stage in the role as the young witch Gillian Holroyd in Bell, Book, and Candle, then went on national tour with the production.
30.
Joan 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.
31.
Joan Bennett starred on Broadway in the comedy Love Me Little, which ran for only eight performances.
32.
Joan Bennett continued to work steadily on the stage and in television, including a guest role as Denise Mitchell in an episode of TV's Burke's Law.
33.
Joan 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 in 1968 for her performance as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, mistress of the haunted Collinwood Mansion.
34.
Joan Bennett starred in five made-for-TV movies between 1972 and 1982.
35.
Joan Bennett appeared in one more feature film, as Madame Blanc in director Dario Argento's horror film Suspiria, for which she received a 1978 Saturn Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
36.
Joan Bennett has a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the film industry.
37.
Joan Bennett's star is located at 6300 Hollywood Boulevard, a short distance from the star of her sister Constance.
38.
Joan Bennett died of heart failure on Friday evening, December 7,1990, aged 80, at her home in Scarsdale, New York.
39.
Joan Bennett appeared in many movies and television productions, listed below in their entirety.