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Joan chose a winner in which to resume her career in 1944:
The Woman in the Window (1944). Written and produced by Nunnally Johnson for the newly organized International
Pictures, and directed by Fritz Lang, it was a don't-tell-your-friends-how-it-ends film. Newsweek magazine
called it "a psychological chiller with a difference," noting that "the accumulative suspense is almost too much for normal
body termperature." Despite the trick ending, The Woman in the Window is a humdinger of a thriller, sizzling
with misguided passion and wrongdoers running amok.
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| with Dan Duryea in The Woman in the Window |
Though Joan did not want to make Nob Hill (1945),
a cliched Barbara Coast yarn with George Raft, she was committed by her Fox contract. But while working on the picture,
she formed Diana Productions with Fritz Lang, who controlled 51%, she 25%, and the remaining 24% shared by various backers.
They arranged a releasing deal with Universal and stipulated that Walter Wanger be hired as producer at $40,000 per picture.
Their first production was the torrid Scarlet Street (1945), based on Jean Renoir's La Chienne (The Bitch).
Joan was professionally reunited with Edward G. Robinson and Dan Duryea (both from Woman in the Window). Robinson
is a henpecked married cashier and Duryea plays Joan's zoot-suited pimp. Joan is a woman of the streets who gladly accepts
Robinson's gifts-----money he has embezzled from the company-----to support her beloved Duryea in a style befitting his alleged
elegance. Ungrateful Duryea may slap her in the face, which she doesn't mind, but Robinson's naive generosity irks her.
When he volunteers to wed her, she cruelly laughs in his face. Joan gave her best performance as Lazy Legs; though enticing
and alluring as in The Woman in the Window, she also emanated a predatory malevolence.
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| The Woman in the Window with Edward G. Robinson, 1944 |
Critics and public alike, who had come to take Joan's screen
presence for granted, were again shaken out of their easygoing rut by The Woman in the Window. It firmly demonstrated
that thirty-four-year-old Joan had a few more cinematic acting tricks up her sleeve, and that her increasingly alluring curvaceous
figure was not her only silver screen asset.
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| Diana Productions: Lang, Bennett, and Wanger |
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| with Edward G. Robinson in Scarlet Street, 1945 |
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| Scarlet Street's 'Lazy Legs' |
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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