What are Joan Bennett's most remembered films?

[Julia99]

Hey folks...which of Joan's films aside from Scarlet Street, HODS and the Brides flicks is she best remembered for?

[michaelhacketttodd]

Suspiria?

[David]

Woman in the Window, Little Women.

[michael c]

for me the parts that come to mind are first her "femme fatale" roles in fritz lang's 1940's film noirs "the woman in the window" and "scarlett street".

then bennett moved into the middle aged "wife and mother" phase of her career in the 1950's notably playing elizabeth taylor's mother in the "father of the bride" series with spencer tracy.

by the 1960's like most actresses of hollywood's "golden age" film work was hard to come by and television made a home for them. here of course joan signed on to DS.

interesting that the horror movie genre also welcomed there actresses in their later years(take a look at bette davis and joan crawford)and through that and perhaps her association with DS bennett ended up in "suspiria" in the 1970's. that film is certainly a favorite of mine.

those are the films that come to mind.
as much as "we" love bennett she never had quite the career of some of her contemporaries in terms of classic film roles and oscar winning performances. in the hierarchy of those "golden age" stars(davis, crawford, hepburn, stanwyke, etc.)joan is something of a secondary player.

[Gothick]

The popular mainstream favorites in her career are Little Women (1933), the Lang films and the Bride films.  Some regard her most artistically poised performance as The Reckless Moment (1949), a dark horse directed by legendary French auteur Max Ophuls; James Mason appeared opposite her in that.  The Walter Wanger shooting scandal happened in 1951 and after that she was more or less blacklisted, although she did appear in a few films.  She started to move more into television at that point.

Her real source of happiness later in life was her daughters and their lives.  She weathered quite a bit of tragedy, including the death of her sister Constance in the 1960s.

G.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I'm ashamed to admit that I've never really seen many of Joan Bennett's films.    I did see Suspiria, but that came out after DS. About the only pre-DS films I've seen are The Man in the Iron Mask and Son of Monte Cristo - and only because they're frequently shown on a PBS station in my area. One of these days I really need to track down her films like The Woman in the Window and Scarlet Street.

[MagnusTrask]

I'm in the middle of watching Scarlet Street again.   I love this double or triple take she does, almost laughing out loud at something Edward G. Robinson's saying, realizing she can't let him see her laughing at him.   Anyway, I'm a beginner regarding her films, myself...

[Uncle Roger]

Trade winds where she becomes a brunette for the first time
Man hunt, a world war II story where she plays a cockney hooker
Margin for Error, another world war II story, where her costars are Otto Preminger and Milton Berle.
Yep, our Elizabeth with mr. Freeze and Louie the Lilac!

[MagnusTrask]

Thanks, Uncy Rog.   JB's film career has been like a second shoe I've been waiting to drop, these past 40 years.   My mother, seeing her on DS, would refer to having seen her in all sorts of films, she'd been a movie star, yet for whatever reason, someone watching old films on TV never saw her.   Maybe they weren't the kinds of films I was interested in as a kid, but I really think Joan Bennett in the credits would at least have gotten me watching for awhile....

Scarlet Street is great.   I have a tape of dubious legality at SLP mode of Father's Little Dividend, she was wasted in that.

[Uncle Roger]

Before cable, Joan's films used to show up on the late show all the time. That's where I saw them. Also remember seeing her screen test for Scarlett O'Hara.  She came quite close to getting the part

[BurkeDevlin]

Not her most famous, but the first one I think of (After Father of the Bride) is a Jack Benny film from the 30's, called Artists and Models Abroad.  I spent the last year and a half listening to 700+ Benny episodes driving to and from work, and when they were promoting that picture, Joan came on the show, to helped plug it.  And they'd had a hilarious bit a few weeks earlier, when Jack was trying to rehearse his part for the movie, and, since Joan wasn't there that week, Rochester played her part.

[Gothick]

She made a lot of films.  Between 1930 and the 1942 or so, her average was four pictures per year. 

G.

[Brian]

"Woman in the Window" and "Scarlet Street" are her classics!  But some early 30s' movies, like"Mississippi" are also notable.  And I just bought "Woman on the Beach" from Warner Archives..I'll let y'all know what I think.

[Sandor]

Leonard Maltin gives Joan's film "The Reckless Moment" 3 1/2 stars, calling it a first-rate suspenser - adapted from the novel "The Blank Wall." Joan plays a murderess blackmailed by James Mason. Sounds worth seeking out.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

That does sound very interesting, Sandor.