Joan Bennett’s ascent to becoming a bona fide 1940s femme fatale all began with a dye job. Inspired by fellow starlet Hedy Lamarr’s brunette locks, producer Walter Wanger reintroduced Joan to Hollywood with 1938’s Trade Winds. The power couple, who eloped in 1940 and welcomed their daughter Stephanie three years later, continued to redefine their professional identities throughout World War II.
In this week’s episode, “Transformation,” Love Is a Crime hosts Karina Longworth and Vanessa Hope (Bennett and Wanger’s granddaughter) unpack Bennett (voiced by Zooey Deschanel) and Wanger’s (voiced by Jon Hamm) respective paths during the ’40s. After signing a new deal with Fox, Bennett would go on to star in five anti-Nazi films between 1940 and 1943 alone, “more than any other American female star of her generation.” This was especially significant considering the taboo nature of U.S. intervention in World War II at the time these movies were released.
After being elected president of the Motion Picture Academy, Wanger vacillates between producing films with a political message (Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent, John Ford’s The Long Voyage Home) and pure escapist entertainment (Arabian Nights). “But these contradictions in Walter’s philosophy and career mirror where the country was at that time: united in supporting and fighting a war whose stakes could hardly have been higher, and desperate for something else to think about,” Longworth says in the episode.
However, the most transformative moment of this decade was Bennett’s partnership with director Fritz Lang. Their 1944 collaboration The Woman in the Window would usher in the genre of film noir alongside Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, starring fellow femme fatale Barbara Stanwyck. “This film, and the genre it helped birth, gave 34 year-old Joan Bennett a solid niche at last,” Longworth explains. “Finally, she had found a recognizable and repeatable persona that she could carry with her from film-to-film. The new Joan Bennett character was salty, cynical, drop-dead gorgeous—and people tended to drop dead around her.”
Listen to the episode above, and be sure to tune in next Tuesday, August 31, for another chapter in Bennett and Wanger’s scandal-filled partnership. Subscribe at listen.vanityfair.com/loveisacrime or wherever you get your podcasts.
— Love Is a Crime: Inside One of Hollywood’s Wildest Scandals
— A First Look at Clerks III (Spoiler: They Still Don’t Like You)
— Why The White Lotus Was Always Going to End That Way
— David Chase Has Some Ideas About Our Continued Sopranos Obsessions
— Why Doesn’t the New Gossip Girl Feel Fun?
— Aretha Franklin: The Little-Known Traumas That Fueled Her Music
— The Unhinged Brilliance of SNL’s Cecily Strong
— Fight Club: How the Movie Foretold 9/11 and Trump
— How The Boys Became 2020’s Most Urgently Political Show
— From the Archive: Selma Blair’s Transformation
— Sign up for the “HWD Daily” newsletter for must-read industry and awards coverage—plus a special weekly edition of “Awards Insider.”
"enter" - Google News
August 24, 2021 at 06:03PM
https://ift.tt/3B77vLr
‘Love Is a Crime’ Podcast: Joan and Walter Enter a New Hollywood Era - Vanity Fair
"enter" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2TwxTMf
https://ift.tt/3d6LMHD
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "‘Love Is a Crime’ Podcast: Joan and Walter Enter a New Hollywood Era - Vanity Fair"
Post a Comment