Joan Bennett

Biography: The daughter of actors Richard Bennett and Adrienne Morrison, Joan Bennett debuted on-stage in Jarnegan, a 1928 play featuring her father. She went to Hollywood the same year and became a star the next after she appeared opposite Ronald Colman in Bulldog Drummond (1929) . Bennett went on to a very busy screen career in several leading roles, playing everything from mothers to femme fatales to mercenary types. She got most of her best roles after she married producer Walter Wanger in 1940. (Her previously husbands included producer/writer Gene Markey.) In 1952, Wanger was jailed for several months for allegedly shooting Bennett's agent in a jealous rage; she divorced Wanger in 1965 and later married critic David Wilde. Bennett's film work slowed down after 1951. She appeared in a number of stage shows in the 1950s and early '60s, and, in the mid-'60s, became a regular on the popular TV Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, which ran from 1966-1971. Bennett's final film appearance wasThe daughter of actors Richard Bennett and Adrienne Morrison, Joan Bennett debuted on-stage in Jarnegan, a 1928 play featuring her father. She went to Hollywood the same year and became a star the next after she appeared opposite Ronald Colman in Bulldog Drummond (1929) . Bennett went on to a very busy screen career in several leading roles, playing everything from mothers to femme fatales to mercenary types. She got most of her best roles after she married producer Walter Wanger in 1940. (Her previously husbands included producer/writer Gene Markey.) In 1952, Wanger was jailed for several months for allegedly shooting Bennett's agent in a jealous rage; she divorced Wanger in 1965 and later married critic David Wilde. Bennett's film work slowed down after 1951. She appeared in a number of stage shows in the 1950s and early '60s, and, in the mid-'60s, became a regular on the popular TV Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, which ran from 1966-1971. Bennett's final film appearance was in Suspiria (1977). The sister of actresses Barbara and Constance Bennett, she died in 1990.… Expand