Joan Bennett

Joan Bennett Born Joan Geraldine Bennett February 27, 1910 Fort Lee, New Jersey, U.S. Died December 7, 1990 (aged 80) Scarsdale, New York, U.S. Pleasant View Cemetery, Lyme, Connecticut, U.S. Nationality American Occupation Actress Years active 1916–1982 Spouse(s) John Marion Fox ​(m. 1926; div. 1928)​ Gene Markey ​(m. 1932; div. 1937)​ Walter Wanger ​(m. 1940; div. 1965)​ David Wilde ​(m. 1978)​ Children 4 Parent(s) Richard Bennett and Adrienne Morrison Relatives Lewis Morrison (grandfather) Constance Bennett (sister) Barbara Bennett (sister) Morton Downey Jr. (nephew) Joan Geraldine Bennett (February 27, 1910 – December 7, 1990) was an American stage, film, and television actress. She came from a show-business family, one of three acting sisters. Beginning her career on the stage, Bennett appeared in more than 70 films from the era of silent movies, well into the sound era. She is best remembered for her film noir femme fatale roles in director Fritz Lang's movies, including Man Hunt (1941), The Woman in the Window (1944), and Scarlet Street (1945), and for her television role as matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (and ancestors Naomi Collins, Judith Collins, and Flora Collins PT) in the gothic 1960’s soap opera Dark Shadows. Bennett's career had three distinct phases: first as a winsome blonde ingenue, then as a sensuous brunette femme fatale (with looks that movie magazines often compared to those of Hedy Lamarr), and finally as a warmhearted wife-and-mother figure. In 1951, Bennett's screen career was marred by scandal after her third husband, film producer Walter Wanger, shot and injured her agent Jennings Lang. Wanger suspected that Lang and Bennett were having an affair, a charge which she adamantly denied.Bennett married four times. In the 1960s, she achieved success for her portrayal of Elizabeth Collins Stoddard on TV's gothic fan favorite, Dark Shadows, for which she received an Emmy nomination (1968). For her final movie role, as Madame Blanc in Dario Argento's cult horror film Suspiria (1977), she received a Saturn Award nomination. Her obituary in The New York Times stated she was "one of the most underrated actresses of her time." Richard Bennett with his three daughters (from left), Constance, Joan, and Barbara (1918) Joan Geraldine Bennett was born in the Palisade section of Fort Lee, New Jersey, on February 27, 1910, the youngest of three daughters of actor Richard Bennett and actress/literary agent Adrienne Morrison.[3] Her older sisters were actress Constance Bennett and actress/dancer Barbara Bennett, who was the first wife of singer Morton Downey and the mother of Morton Downey Jr. Part of a famous theatrical family, Bennett's maternal grandfather was Jamaica-born Shakespearean actor Lewis Morrison, who embarked on a stage career in the late 1860s. He was of English, Spanish, Jewish, and African ancestry. On the side of her maternal grandmother, actress Rose Wood, the profession dated back to traveling minstrels in 18th century England. Bennett first appeared in a silent movie as a child with her parents and sisters in her father's drama The Valley of Decision (1916), which he adapted for the screen. She attended Miss Hopkins School for Girls in Manhattan, then St. Margaret's, a boarding school in Waterbury, Connecticut, and L'Hermitage, a finishing school in Versailles, France. On September 15, 1926, 16-year-old Bennett married John M. Fox in London. They divorced July 30, 1928 in Los Angeles based on charges of his alcoholism. They had one child, Adrienne Ralston Fox (born February 20, 1928), for whom Bennett fought successfully in court to rename Diana Bennett Markey, when the child was eight years old. Her name changed to Diana Bennett Wanger in 1944.