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Anxious to maintain her career in a declining motion-picture
market in which the emphasis was on youth, Joan wisely moved into mother roles with Father of the Bride (1950), a
comedy directed by Vincente Minnelli and starting her co-lead of nearly two decades before, Spencer Tracy. Oncamera,
Joan functions as Tracy's wife and the go-between for her befuddled onscreen husband and dreamy daughter (Elizabeth Taylor).
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| with Robert Cummings in For Heaven's Sake, 1950 |
By January 1951, Walter Wanger, was close to involuntary
bankruptcy, a situation forced on him by the California bank which had backed Joan of Arc. Joan's agent, Jenning's
Lang, aware that the Wangers were dangerously short of funds, sent Joan to New York to discuss a possible television series,
which would be produced from Manhattan. Wanger objected to the separation and Joan returned home to California, but
when Lang then suggested a video series for her to be shot in Hollywood, Wanger again objected because he considered it "a
challenge to his position as head of the household." Several times Wanger threatened Joan, "If you see any more of Jennings,
I'll kill him." When Wanger, desperate for industry work, was forced to take a job with poverty-row Monogram, Joan said,
"the damage to his ego and pride was enormous."
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| Father's Little Dividend, 1951 |
In the summer of 1951, Joan starred as Susan in the Westport,
Connecticut stock production of Susan and God, with her daughter Melinda in a featured role. "It was great
fun for us to work together and to find Joan Bennett and Melinda Markey on the same playbill."
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| with Paul Douglas and Linda Darnell, 1951 |
On December 13, 1951, Joan drove to the Beverly Hills office
of her agent, Jennings Lang, and picked him up for a scheduled business luncheon. Afterwards, with Lang driving, they
returned to the parking lot next to his office building across the street from the city hall and the police station.
Lang got out of the car to escort Joan around to the driver's seat. Standing a few feet away was Wanger with a gun poised
in his hand. Lang said, "Don't be silly, Walter, don't. . . ." But Wanger shot twice. The first bullet smashed
into the car's tail fin, the second ricocheted off the pavement and hit Lang in the groin. He fell to the ground.
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| Father of the Bride, 1950 |
When emotionally ill Gene Tierney forced her to bow out of
20th Century Fox's For Heaven's Sake (1950), producer William Perlberg cast Joan as the selfish stage actress wed
to an egocentric producer-director, played by Robert Cummings. Clifton Webb is an acerbic angel who materializes
to help a little girl (Gigi Perreau) get born to the overly busy couple. Joan's Lydia says, "I've been waiting for only
one thing-----a vacation," but instead she comes under the diligent angel's spell and realizes, vaguely at first, that she
wants more than fame and a vacation.
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| Joan and Walter at a movie premiere, 1950 |
Magazine advertisements began appearing about that time proclaiming, "Happily,
MGM announces a joyous new arrival, the blessed event of 1951, Father's Little Dividend." In this the sequel
to Father of the Bride, Joan, Tracy, and Elizabeth Taylor repeated their key roles, as did Don Taylor, Billie Burke,
and Moroni Olsen. Variety reported the film as number ten at the 1951 box office. Joan was credited as
being a strong supporting asset as the "charmingly eccentric wife" (The New York Times).
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| Melinda Markey in Susan and God, 1951 |
What was to be Joan's last big screen performance in two
and a half years was The Guy Who Came Back (1951), a comedy in which a wife and mother (JB) almost loses her ex-football-player
husband (Paul Douglas) to vamping Linda Darnell. Douglas was the picture's focal point, but "sadly enough, one
is only mildly intrigued, not entranced, by his case history" (A. Weiler, The New York Times).
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| Walter, Joan, Joan's sister Barbara, and Jennings Lang, early 1951 |
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| Joan leaving the police station, December 1951 |
A parking lot attendant drove Lang and Joan to the office of a doctor
nearby, who, in turn, sent them to Midway Hospital in Los Angeles where an emergency operation was performed.
Wanger was escorted to the police station, where he calmly informed
the arresting officers, "I've just shot the son-of-a-bitch who tried to break up my home." But Joan insists, "What even
Walter didn't realize was that he wasn't shooting at Jennings so much as he was shooting at the entire motion picture industry."
Lang's recovery was speedy, and a few days thereafter he forgave
Wanger publicly. "I've represented Miss Bennett for many years as her agent and can only state that Walter Wanger misconstrued
what was solely a business relationship. Since there are families and children concerned, I hope this whole regrettable
incident can be forgotten as quickly as possible."
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| Walter with attorney Jerry Geisler |
On April 5, 1952, on the advice of his attorney, Jerry Geisler,
Wanger waived a trial on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon. On June 4, he began a 4-month prison sentence at
the Wayside Honor Farm at Castaic, California, 50 miles from Los Angeles, where he worked as a librarian. Joan was comforted
during this period by such friends as Gene Markey, James and Pamela Mason, and Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
Wanger served 3 months and 9 days of his jail sentence. On
his release on September 13, 1952, he told newsmen what he thought of the American penal system, "It's the nation's number
one scandal! I want to do a film about it!" He eventually made 2 films about it, Riot in Cell Blook 11
(1954) and I Want to Live! (1958).
As an aside, Joan noted of the time leading up to the shooting in
her book The Bennett Playbill, that "Over the preceding three years my relationship with Walter had become filled
with untenable problems. Actually, the decline of our marriage had begun much earlier than his professional decline.
I learned too late that he was not essentially a family man, and although he cherished Ditty and Mims, he'd never been overly
enthusiastic about fatherhood until after his own two daughters were born.
There was added distress and pain in the
not too subtle evidences of his wanderings in other directions beyond the family hearth. On that score, the marriage
had been extremely rocky from the beginning. I was on the point of divorcing him for a romantic dereliction only three
months after we were married, but through a gently remonstrating letter from Mother, which arrived just after her death, and
my own deep attachment to him, I was reluctant to force a break at the time. Throughout the years that followed, there
were any number of other amorous misdemeanors, and finally I couldn't overlook them any longer."
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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