The Joan Bennett who, in The Man I Married, cries, "Heil heel!" at her Nazi husband, is known to millions of cinemagoers.  But few know the Joan Bennett here visited by LIFE photographer Peter Stackpole.  This Joan Bennett is an intelligent, handsome and busy woman of 30 who presides over a large home with ten servants near Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard.  She is an interior decorator who has designed the furnishings of her French Provincial house.  She is an amateur gardener with a passion for garden gadgets and a penchant for digging in the soil.  She is an efficient household manager who scans magazines for kitchen inventions and keeps recipes on file.  She is the wife of Walter Wanger, the independent producer whose latest movie Foreign Correspondent will compete with hers at the box office.  And lastly, she is the mother of two lively girls, whose education she faithfully supervises.  [In the photo below] for instance, she reads to Melinda, her younger, in their favorite spot, Melinda's bed.

 

 

 

 

 

Household accounts, checked once a month by Joan, present difficulties, since running Bennett-Wanger establishment is no small business and she doesn't like to add.  The miniature horses on her desk are part of a large collection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Melinda's dessert is chocolate ice-cream cone.  Her father is Gene Markey, whom Joan married in 1932, divorced in 1937.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A new kitchen gadget for grilling bacon is tried out by Joan while Berta the cook looks on somewhat skeptically.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[The 2 photos at right and below are from PETER STACKPOLE, LIFE IN HOLLYWOOD 1936 - 1952, published in 1992 by Clark City Press.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flowers for house are cut by Joan every morning with help of Melinda, who affectionately trails her mother around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A trunk full of scripts of movies and plays is kept by Joan in the basement.  The dog is Duke, her prizewinning cocker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Besmeldi," on station wagon is derived from Bennett, Melinda and Diana.  Diana is daughter of John Marion Fox, Seattle lumberman, whom Joan married in 1926, divorced in 1928.  She goes to exclusive Westlake School, attended by Shirley Temple.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fan-mail conference is held at lunch time with Joan's personal secretary, who hands over portraits for autographs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The whole family, including Joan, her children and Walter Wanger, her husband, go shopping at Los Angeles Farmers' Market.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In a mirror-lined room Joan dresses for a formal dinner with the help of her maid.  The evening gown is a gift from her husband, whom she married [this] last January.  So is the white fox cape she wears (below) as she descends circular stairway to foyer.