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Her excellent performance in Little Women led Walter
Wanger to sign Joan to a personal contract. He loaned her to Paramount for The Pursuit of Happiness (1934),
a period piece about "bundling," then to Universal for The Man Who Reclaimed His Head (1935) opposite Claude Rains.
But it was Private Worlds (1935), personally produced by Wanger, that first revealed the depth of Joan's dramatic
talents. The film depicted the emotional disturbances within a mental institution, with Joan pleaying a neurotic doctor's
wife who has a nervous breakdown.
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| Mississippi with Bing Crosby, 1935 |
On other loan-outs she was excellent as tthe irresponsible
heiress in She Couldn't Take It (1935) with George Raft, and came off well as the flip manicurist in Wanger's production
of Big Brown Eyes (1936) opposite Cary Grant. Wedding Present (1936), a second outing with Grant,
was a rather weak screwball comedy. Wanger left Paramount in 1937 for a production deal with United Artists on Vogues
of 1938 (1937) in which Joan played a decorative model opposite Warner Baxter.
During the winter of '37-'38, Joan left filmmaking to replace
a pregnant Margaret Sullavan in the national company of Stage Door, though later in 1938 Joan starred in three pictures-----I
Met My Love Again and Artists and Models Abroad, both produced by Wanger, and The Texans, opposite
Randolph Scott. None of them did much for her career.
The public and critics liked her darkened locks. This
new image was responsible for her being tested as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind: "I did the drunk scene;
also the scene when she came back to Tara with everything in ruins, and the corset-lacing scene. I don't recall being
terribly crushed about not being cast in the picture."
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| The Pursuit of Happiness with Francis Lederer , 1934 |
At this time Wanger had his own production unit at Paramount
and while he had no projects ready for Joan, he loaned her to that studio for two Bing Crosby vehicles-----Mississippi
and Two For Tonight, both released in 1935. She found Crosby easygoing, but hated lipsynching her singing.
In 1937 Joan divorced Gene Markey. She wrote years
later, "Little by little erosion set in and quietly wore away our relationship." She remained friends with him.
Markey had adopted Adrienne (whose name was changed to Diana in 1936), so she and Melinda could grow up as sisters.
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| I Met My Love Again with Henry Fonda, 1938 |
At that time Joan Bennett was considered a competent actress,
but she didn't have the reputation to match her dramatic potential. "With the exception of Little Women and
Private Worlds, I'd played the insipid blonde ingenue." It was Walter Wanger and Tay Garnett, director of the
Wanger-produced Trade Winds (1938) who changed Joan's career with a gimmick-----a brunette wig. The movie was
a travelogue whodunit requiring Joan to wear a disguise so Garnett and Wanger came up with changing Joan's looks with
a brunette wig, since "she looks like a blonde Hedy Lamarr anyway." Joan remembers, "The minute I turned brunette, the
parts I got were so much better and I then became interested in what I was doing in films."
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| with Fredric March in Trade Winds |
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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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