JOAN BENNETT - AUTOGRAPHED SIGNED PHOTOGRAPH CO-SIGNED BY: WALTER WANGER - HFSID 328050

JOAN BENNETT and WALTER WANGER
Rare candid photograph (3½x5) of the couple posed together outside an office, with each signing on their respective images. Wanger shot Bennett's agent, Jennings Lang, in 1951, believing the two to be having an affair.
Photograph signed: "Regards/ Walter Wanger", "Joan Bennett", B/w 3½x5. JOAN BENNETT (1910-1990), the daughter of stage actor Richard Bennett and sister of screen actresses Constance and Barbara Bennett, starred in over 40 films, including Bulldog Drummond (1929), Little Women (1933), Father of the Bride (1950) and We're No Angels (1955). Active on the stage in the 1960s, she also starred in the TV series, Dark Shadows (1966-1971), and appeared in a number of made-for-television movies. WALTER WAGNER (1894-1968) was an Academy Award-nominated American film producer. An intellectual and a socially conscious movie executive who produced provocative message movies and glittering romantic melodramas, Wanger's career started at Paramount studios in the 1920s and led him to work at virtually every major studio as either a contract producer or an independent. Wagner worked on many films - including The Sheik (1921), which made Rudolph Valentino a star - before producing his first picture, film The Cocoanuts (1929), which was the Marx Brothers' first film. His many significant productions include Gabriel Over the White House (1933), Stagecoach (1939), Joan of Arc (1948), the science-fiction classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), I Want to Live! (1958), and his final film, the monumental epic Cleopatra (1963), for which he earned an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. Wanger married Joan Bennett in 1940, remaining married to the actress until their divorce in 1965.In 1951, Wanger shot at Bennett's agent Jennings Lang, believing him to be having an affair with Bennett. Wanger's attorney mounted a "temporary insanity" defense and Wanger served a four-month sentence at the Castaic Honor Farm two hours' drive north of Los Angeles. The experience profoundly affected him and in 1954 he made the prison film Riot in Cell Block 11, directed by Body Snatchers director Don Siegel. Corners slightly worn. Pencil notes (unknown hand) on verso. Ink stamp on verso. Fine condition.