Walter Wanger was the one who fired the gun in December 1951, but it was Joan Bennett who would pay the highest price. While Wanger’s career found an upward swing, making high-profile films like Cleopatra and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Bennett was “essentially blacklisted” from the industry, as explained by Love Is a Crime cohosts Karina Longworth and Vanessa Hope.
In this week’s episode, Bennett’s post-scandal career is explored—from a rocky return to the stage to her nearly 400 episodes on Dark Shadows. As noted by Bennett in the early 1950s, the shooting scandal had essentially blown her industry standing to smithereens. “Within a short time, it was painfully clear that I was a professional outcast in Hollywood, one of the ‘untouchables,’” she wrote at the time. “I was excommunicated. Evidence lies in the fact that before December 13, 1951, I’d made sixty-five movies in twenty-three years. In the decade that followed I made five.”
Despite roles in the Christmas comedy We’re No Angels alongside Humphrey Bogart and film noir There’s Always Tomorrow with Fred MacMurray, Bennett was forced to sell her cherished home. She would soon return to theater, building a professional and personal relationship with actor Donald Cook. When Bennett expressed her desire to get divorced and relocate to New York, Wanger threatened a custody battle, ensuring she’d be trapped in the marriage. Bennett would go on to have “two potential partners die while waiting for Walter to grant her a divorce” in 1965, as noted by Longworth.
Newly single and in search of financial security, Bennett found herself cast on Dark Shadows, the daily soap opera she starred in from 1966 to 1971. What began as a stalled gothic romance was reinvigorated when creator Dan Curtis brought vampire Barnabas Collins, played by Jonathan Frid, into the fold. In addition to merch sales, a song on the Billboard charts, and spin-off films including the 2012 Tim Burton–directed remake, Dark Shadows reintroduced Bennett to a new generation—one that had never heard of the Jennings Lang shooting. As explained by Longworth, the show “allowed Joan Bennett to flip the script of what would have been expected of her—both as an aging Hollywood star, and as a woman who had been vilified for her role in a love triangle with a violent end.”
Listen to the episode above, and be sure to tune in next Tuesday, October 19, for the final chapter of both Joan’s life and Love Is a Crime. Subscribe at listen.vanityfair.com/loveisacrime or wherever you get your podcasts.
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