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Joan Bennett never had any desire to become an actress, she wished only to be a wife and mother. Joan married Jack Fox at the age of 16, became a mother at 17 and was divorced by the time she was 18 years old. In order to support herself and her baby, Joan decided to try acting until something better came along.
Joan went through two phases in her film career. During the thirties, resembling a golden-haired porcelain doll, Joan usually played the innocent ingénue. The most memorable of these roles was her portrayal of Amy in Little Women (1933).
The second phase of her career began with the film Trade Winds (1938) where a new raven-haired Joan appeared. "After that film everyone liked me in dark hair," explained Joan, "so I turned my hair dark and have received much better parts ever since." Many people noted a resemblance between Joan and Hedy Lamarr who would later marry Joan's second husband screenwriter Gene Markey. Joan said, "There must have been something to it because after Trade Winds was released, I was greeted as Miss Lamarr in dimly lit restaurants. Personally, I liked the idea of escaping from all that bland, blonde innocence and thought the whole thing was very funny, but I don't think Hedy found the comparisons very amusing."
Because of her glamorous, new brunette look as well as her exceptional talent, Joan was very seriously considered for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind, Joan claimed the part would have been hers had Vivien Leigh stayed in England.
The 1940s and 1950s were the "film noir" decades. It was during the forties that Joan Bennett, alluring and husky voiced, found her niche as a film noir femme fatale. Fritz Lang directed the films which were among the highpoints of her career beginning with Man Hunt (1941) where Joan gave perhaps her most poignant performance as a Cockney prostitute with a heart of gold. The next two Lang films both co-starred Edward G. Robinson and Dan Duryea, The Woman In The Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1946) where Joan played "Lazy Legs", a character who was obviously lackadaisical and careless to the point of sloppiness in her surroundings but managed to be unquestionably glamorous at the same time. In The Woman In The Window, Edward G. Robinson becomes captivated by a painting of a beautiful woman and once he meets her, she sends him on the road to destruction.
Joan continued this film noir trend in Jean Renoir'sThe Woman on the Beach (1947) where she was a faithless wife deceiving a blind husband. She teamed with Fritz Lang once again in Secret Beyond The Door (1948) a film somewhat reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca where Joan played a bride terrified of her husband, and like Rebecca the central character of the film is the female star. Joan Bennett carries the film all the way through.
Two of her best films were Ernest Hemingway's The Macomber Affair (1947) again as a devious wife and she gave a multi-faceted portrayal of a blackmail victim of James Mason in The Reckless Moment (1949).
Just one year after giving birth to her daughter Shelley, Joan Bennett became a grandmother at the age of 39 when her eldest daughter Diana became a mother. Marlene Dietrich, consistently referred to as "The World's Most Glamorous Grandmother" sent Joan a telegram saying "Thanks for taking the heat off."
Almost directly from film noir, Joan segued into playing Spencer Tracy's wife and Elizabeth Taylor's mother in the thoroughly charming family comedies Father of the Bride and Father's Little Dividend. It was during this time, that Joan Bennett became involved in a scandal that she once said "destroyed my career in the motion picture industry".
Joan's husband producer Walter Wanger in a blinded, jealous rage shot and wounded her agent Jennings Lang in a parking lot. Wanger went to prison for four months. Lang fortunately recovered and the Wangers eventually divorced in 1965. Joan once said "I might as well have pulled the trigger myself" because after the shooting incident she was virtually blacklisted. Joan made only five films in the decade that followed. Like her sister Constance, Joan turned successfully to the stage.
In addition to the stage, Joan Bennett also found success in television. For five years Joan had a role on the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows which brought a whole new following of fans who remain loyal to this day.
In 1978 Joan married movie critic David Wilde who remained her husband until the end of her life. In December 1990, Joan Bennett passed away at the age of 80. Joan was survived by four daughters, Diana Anderson, Melinda Bena, Stephanie Guest and Shelley Wanger and 13 grandchildren. In her beautifully written book The Bennett Playbill, Joan wrote: "I'm aware of the priceless privilege of having been born into the theater. Although it was a career I rejected at first, the profession has given me an incredibly varied life and more than my fair share of success, failure, love, laughter and despair. I've not a single regret for any of it."
source: classichollywoodbios.com
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