No one does icy better than Joan Bennett. Even when she's playing the kind, loving wife and mom, as she did in the original FATHER OF THE BRIDE, I think she's far more interesting as a bitchy character. Witness Judith in 1897--the cold way she had her husband walled up after lulling him into a false sense of security--classic Bennett!
As for that wooden spoon, memories came roaring into my head--my twin friends who lived next door when I was a kid, and their elderly grandmother who had a huge wooden spoon hanging on the wall. She used it for cooking her delicious Hungarian signature dishes, but when any of the three of us misbehaved (and those blasted twins ALWAYS bonded together and snitched that *I* was the bad one), she'd take that spoon and apply it to our bad little behinds! When we were good, Grandma Weiss used to give us shot glasses filled with Hershey syrup--yummmmm! And it probably explains why I'm a chocoholic to this day.
Getting back on topic, I loved it when Joan Bennett segued from nice to evil and back. The only one who rivaled her in that talent was Jonathan Frid's Barnabas.
Love, Robin