Screenland Plus TV-Land (Nov 1952 - Oct 1953)

you're good, people will take notice. Be versatile. The more versatile you are, the more opportunties you may be offered. Above all, be in the right place at the right time with talent. What amazes him is the fact that TV viewers, seeing only the people on the screen, never seem to realize it takes one and wife again." When her husband pumped a bullet into her handsome 30-year-old business agent in a jealous fury, Hollywood was more shocked than it had been in many years. Wanger's accusation that Lang had come between him and his wife stunned the film capital, for Joan, now 41 and one of the most glamourous of American grandmothers, had not before been touched by even a breath of scandal. According to police, Lang and Joan on the fateful afternoon had been formulating a new television show. Joan parked her car in a lot behind Lang's office. Wanger drove by the lot at 2:30 P.M. and noticed his wife's car. When he passed the lot an hour later he said the car was still there. He decided to await her return. They arrived at 5 P.M. in Lang's car. As they walked toward Joan's car, Wanger approached them. An argument followed. Then Wanger pulled a pistol from his pocket and fired twice at Lang, one bullet missing its target. Both Joan and Lang insisted their relationship was merely that of business associates, nothing more. Joan said spiritedly that "if Walter thinks there was any romance, he is mistaken." But Wanger asserted: "A year ago Joan's affection for me chilled. I suspected an affair with Lang. I hired private detectives to follow my wife." Reports made by the detectives were found in his car after the shooting and turned over to the District Attorney. Wanger blamed Lang for what he said was a change in Joan's attitude toward him. Police said Wanger told them he had "a long talk" with Lang in New York last January, telling him that "if anybody tries to break up my home, I'll shoot him." Lang, meanwhile, asserted Wanger was "hotheaded and confused when he said I was threatening his home." "A fellow who's been up as high as Wanger and comes down so fast is liable to get hotheaded," Lang said. "I feel sorry for him and his family." Wanger, police said Joan told them, had been distraught since the Bank of America brought a recent bankruptcy action against him, alleging he owed $178,476 on his productions. Hollywood believes that the ebb in their marital relations is closely allied 66 hundred people behind the scenes, to make the following shows run so smoothly: Break The Bank — CBS — Sunday — 9:30 pm. EST. Double Or Nothing — Mon.— Wed. — Fri. CBS— 2:00 pm. EST. Balance Your Budget — CBS — Saturday—10:00 pm. EST. END with Wanger's decline as a successful producer. Wanger, in the top ranks in the past, had staked everything on his production of "Joan Of Arc," starring Ingrid Bergman. Ingrid's love affair with Roberto Rossellini and the resulting scandal highly publicized throughout the world are blamed by Wanger for his misfortune. Bergman, he believed, was no longer looked upon as a symbol of the spiritual defender of France. He had hopes of grossing huge profits from "Joan Of Arc," but Bergman's extra-marital romance caused a collapse at the box-office. Nothing he did thereafter seemed to pan out. Joan Bennett said that Wanger "lost so much money" making "Joan Of Arc" that he seemed unable to get back on his feet, and he began to feel the whole world was against him. When she married Wanger she had a hefty bankroll and owned a $150,000 house. All of it went to pay his debts incurred in making "Joan Of Arc." When she was making "Father Of The Bride" and "Father's Little Dividend" she was reported to have given Wanger $500 a week out of her salary. Wanger told police he and Joan had discussed divorce several weeks before the incident. It was never seriously considered by Joan, it was stated, until his jealousy "became unbearable." Then, it is said, she told him that if he stood in the way of her getting jobs she would have to take drastic action. She cited the fact she and Wanger and Mr. and Mrs. Lang had "spent a lot of time together," and that Lang was the one who "got me TV jobs which, goodness knows, I needed. "To think I should be the one to bring all this terrible publicity on Hollywood," Joan said. "Walter's jealousy of Jennings Lang is so absurd it borders on temporary derangement." Meanwhile, Joan, Wanger and Lang stayed out of the public eye, she attending informal dinners at the James Masons and rehearsing for her tour in "Bell, Book And Candle." "Joan seems resigned to the fact she has to work again," a close friend said. "She has to support her family and she's nearly broke." Another tragic aftermath of the sensational incident was the sudden death of Lang's wife, Pam, of a heart attack on October 22 last. An innocent victim of the shooting tragedy, Pam had stood staunchly by her husband. She was in constant attendance upon him until hii recovery from his wound, and it is said they had worked out successfully their marital problems. Pam, like Joan, was 41 years old. She married Lang in 1940, and they had two sons. Last Spring Hollywood was palpitating over reports Joan and Wanger had kissed and made up just before she left for the East. The couple had been separated since the shooting. When Joan, radiant in a gray suit with three white orchids decorating her left shoulder and wearing a white off-theface straw hat, stepped off the plane at LaGuardia Field, New York, she admitted that Wanger had driven her to the airport in Los Angeles, adding, intriguingly: "And he kissed me three times." She now refused to comment on the case while it was still pending in the courts, but she declared she would not be able to attend her husband's trial because she would be rehearsing for her play. As she talked at LaGuardia she noticed a ladybug had crept on the hand of a reporter. She asked: "May I have it?" Joan put the bug on her own hand and said: "Ladybugs are good luck. I sure could use some." Arriving in Chicago on April 22 to open in her play, the vivid Joan had recourse to a remark that could have served as the curtain line of a Broadway drama: "The past must be done with — for the sake of the future." With little less rhetoric, she again refused to say whether she would reconcile with her husband. "That's a personal matter, and I'd rather not discuss it," she said. A month went by and then before the startled eyes of newsmen at Chicago, Walter Wanger and Joan Bennett were seen to embrace and kiss before he boarded a plane for Los Angeles to begin serving his prison sentence. He had been visiting his wife, who had replaced Rosalind Russell in "Bell, Book And Candle" in Chicago, and their eightyear-old daughter, Stephanie. A reporter, finding them holding hands in a coffee shop at the Chicago airport just before the plane left, asked: "Does this mean a reconciliation?" To the question Joan smiled her most enigmatic smile, but Wanger replied: "No comment, but you can say there is always hope where there is understanding." As the plane taxied down the runway Wanger blew kisses to Joan from a window. Joan returned them, kiss for kiss. Newsmen thought they had news. Walter Wanger appeared at the bar of justice in Superior Court, Hollywood, on April 15. There was no trial, and the film colony waiting four months for a sensational drama found itself listening to a simple announcement by the producer's attorney, Jerry Giesler, that "we submit the case on the basis of the (CONTINUED ON PACE 68) SOME WOUNDS NEVER HEAL... [CONTINUED FROM PACE 31]