Bio 13

As much as Joan relished social events and travel opportunities after the demise of "Dark Shadows," she was not ready to retire from acting. Even in her mid-60s, she thrived on work. Tho her daughters, she always seemed somewhat restless and disgruntled whenever she was between projects. By this point, most of her offers came from dinner theaters and summer and winter stock companies. The plays were mostly light fare, but always she approached her work with her old discipline and professionalism.

Madame Blanc in Suspiria, 1977

Once she arrived in Rome, where principal photography was to take place, Joan almost immediately regretted that she had said yes to the project. The Italian methods of filming were slow and disorganized. One consolation was the chance to get to know veteran Italian actress Alida Valli, cast in the film as a sadistic ballet instructor. Balli befriended Joan and David and introduced them to several of the excellent, little-known local restaurants. On days off from filming, Joan and David traveled to Venice-----scene of her honeymoon with Jack Fox in 1926-----and Florence. On the whole, however, the trip was not a success. When Suspiria opened in Italy in February 1977, it turned out to be a surprising success. It did less well in its US release that September, and Joan's reviews weren't so hot.

May 1973

In 1976, quite unexpectedly, she received another offer to do a feature film. It was called Suspiria, and it was another thriller, this one about a German ballet school that is actually a front for a deadly coven of witches. Given Joan's objections to violence in the movies, it is surprising that she accepted a part in the film, which featured several gruesome murders-----the first in the opening scenes. The script was chaotic and didn't make much sense, and her role as the headmistress of the ballet school was not large, but David urged her to accept it. The director was Dario Argento, whose 1970 film The Bird with the Crystal Plumage David had admired; besides, Suspiria meant an all-expenses-paid trip for two to Italy.

with Jessica Harper in Suspiria

with Alida Valli in Suspiria, 1977

1984 Photo Portrait by Horst

From How to Be Attractive, Joan Bennett, 1943:

How Is Your Heart?

What! Why, everyone admits that women are sweeter, more understanding, gentler than men. Wait a moment. Those nice words aren't true. Kindness, like all the other virtues and vices, doesn't belong to one sex. If we are no worse than men, neither are better. We belong to the human race before we belong to a sex group.

It is impossible to read and understand headlines without beginning to recall the words of great religious philosophers. "Faith, hope, love --- but the greatest of these is love . . . without love we are as tinkling cymbals . . . do unto others as you would have them do unto you . . . love thy neighbor as thyself." How painfully we are learning that these weren't impossible ideals, but practical rules that man can't live without! We destroy ourselves when we don't follow them. The world made Hitler. You and I by our indifference helped this monstrous thing to be born and grow strong. And now we must destroy it --- but it will come again in a different guise unless we, ourselves, stop feeding its source of strength.

When we turn our faces away from our own neglected people . . . when, shocked and hurt to see fellow humans living like animals, we console ourselves that they want no better, deserve no better . . . when we indulge in feeding our own poor pride by pretending we are "nicer" than other people . . . when we judge people not by themselves but by ugly little labels of race and color . . . when we sit on the sidelines and watch life, but never become fighters for fairness . . . we are busily at work nursing the soil that will send up another Hitler. For he is the embodiment of all of our own cruelty and arrogance.

I don't remember when or how I got hold of the yardstick of kindness. Certainly it drops from my hands too frequently. My critics and my friends will testify that I'm impatient, quick-tempered, and caustic. I have even been guilty of ugly generalizations. But brutal and unfair as I have been and probably shall be, I have lost the knack of effective, damaging cruelty. It didn't disappear by any reasoning process or abstract philosophy. I won't even tell the actual turning-point. But it was typically woman-fashion. You see, it is easy to love babies; it is impossible for normal women to hate them, mistreat them, or even think of them as anything but babies for whom we offer, each in her own way, a plea that life will be good to them.

When I find myself labeling groups, when I discover myself being indifferent, overly concerned with my small and still sheltered personal life, I think of those other women who face a world without hope for their children. And I watch that careless word, fight in my own way to do my very small part to give all little mortals a chance at happiness. It's selfishness in the highest degree. I have children of my own. I want their world to be clean and free. If I help to rob other children of that world, what possible assurance have I that my own won't live in the hopeless one of discrimination, poverty, sorrow?

I grow a little embarrassed, knowing I am not qualified to discuss these things glibly or as a personification of them. And I needn't write more --- great, gentle, wise men have recorded this way and rule of life in the Old and New Testament. But it had to be mentioned --- even in a none too serious book on beauty, by a far from great, gentle, or wise woman. For there is no greater beauty than that brought to the face by compassion. There is no beauty or loveliness without it.

Page 12

All textual information on the "Biography" pages collected from the following:

How to Be Attractive, Joan Bennett, 1943; June-July 1977 issue, Films in Review, "Joan Bennett" article by Ronald Bowers; The Glamour Girls, James Robert Parrish, 1975; The Bennett Playbill, Joan Bennett and Lois Kibbee, 1970; Walter Wanger: Hollywood Independent, Matthew Bernstein, 1994; The Bennetts, An Acting Family, Brian Kellow, 2004.

A JOAN BENNETT PHOTO ALBUM

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