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Her career was fast-paced in 1932 with a total of six Fox
features in release, providing the quantity but not the quality to boost Joan to realistic movie stardom like her sister Constance
at RKO. Along with She Wanted a Millionaire, Joan appeared in Careless Lady, The Trial of Vivienne
Ware, Weekends Only, Wild Girl, then came a chance to work with Spencer Tracy once again in a bantering,
good-natured comedy/melodrama, Me and My Gal. Given the chance, Joan demonstrated she could be much more than
a bland, weak, cotton-candy screen blonde. She played a gum-chewing waitress who was boisterous, a bit rowdy, yet compellingly
gentle.
After Me and My Gal, Joan might have hoped for better
things at Fox, but it was the dismal Arizona to Broadway that ended her studio association. Joan and Fox called
it quits.
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| as the youngest March sister, Amy |
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| with Kathrine Hepburn, Frances Dee, and Jean Parker in Little Women |
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Now a free agent again, Joan finally had an opportunity to
work at RKO, where Constance had done so well. She won the role of Amy in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women
(1933), directed by George Cukor and starring Katharine Hepburn as Jo.
Joan referred to this prestige picturization of the children's
classic as "the long-awaited film of merit" in her career, and admitted that "it is one of my favorites." Further, she
said that Cukor "is one of my favorite directors. Under his direction, each character in the film leapt into life."
As Amy, Joan is first seen standing on a bench in the schoolroom with a sign about her neck, "I am ashamed of myself."
She is the one who loves to annoy Hepburn's Jo, and the March sister who revels in the display of four-syllable words like
fastidious. Joan was pregnant during the filming of Little Women and in one scene, she was required
to fall from a chest of drawers. After explaining to Cukor her reason for not wanting to comply, the script was hastily
revised and Hepburn got the on-camera task. For her spirited performance, Joan received excellent notices.
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| with Jean Parker and Henry Stephenson |
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| as Amy March in Little Women |
Melinda Markey (nicknamed "Mims") was born on February 27, 1934,
on Joan's twenty-fourth birthday. Gene Markey "loved Ditty beyond measure," Joan recalled, "but when his very own daughter
came into the world, he was ecstatic."
Joan Bennett, Diana Anderson, Diana Markey, Melinda Markey, Melinda
Beno, Stephanie Wanger, Stephanie Guest, Shelley Wanger, Shelley Mortimer, John Marion Fox, Gene Markey, Walter Wanger, Richard
Bennett, Constance Bennett, Barbara Bennett, Barbara Downey, Adrienne Morrison, Adrienne Bennett, Mabel Bennett, Mabel Morrison,
Adrienne Ralston Fox, www.joanbennett.net
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