Screenland (May-Oct 1929)

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the THIRD By Edwin Martin o ut Hollywood way where most of the stories of over-night successes are written by high-salaried press agents, there has come a blonde conqueror. They call her Joan of 'Art1! And it's all because Joan Bennett, with only one year on the stage and three months on the screen, has acquired a success that it took other members of her distinguished family many years to attain. Joan's father, the noted stage and screen star, Richard Bennett, worked 25 years before he became famous on the American stage. Her sister Constance, formerly the wife of the millionaire Phillip Plant, has been in pictures for several years, and has just recently become a star. Her sister, Barbara, danced on the stage for two or three years before she finally received recognition and has only just been made a leading woman of the screen. Yet, in less than three months, Joan Bennett, who came to Hollywood, entirely unsung in films, and with only one stage role to her credit, has become one of our most sought-after leading women. For this 18 year old girl, the great star George Arliss and Warner Brothers studio held up production eight days on "Disraeli," the reason being that Miss Bennett was working on "Three Live Ghosts" for United Artists, and neither Mr. Arliss nor Warner Brothers could find her equivalent for the part. This is something that has happened to few stars and hardly any leading women. All this for Joan, who is as yet unknown to the film fans, and whose only completed picture, "Bulldog Drummond," has not been generally exhibited except in the larger cities. It all began when "Bulldog Drummond" was previewed. It was Joan's first role on the screen. Her statuesque beauty, the timbre of her voice and her blonde appeal, were shown to such an advantage in this film, that producers demanded her services. Immediately, United Artists cast her for the leading feminine role in "Three Live Ghosts," the talkie version of Max Marcus's stage success. Oddly enough, Joan came to the screen from a stage play about the screen, as she was playing the leading feminine role opposite her father in "Jarnegan," Jim Tully's satire on Hollywood, when Samuel Goldwyn selected her for Ronald Colman's leading woman in "Bulldog Drummond." Before this film was released, she played on the Los Angeles stage with Doris Keane in "The Pirate." After the play had ended she started work on "Three Live Ghosts," and that is about all that Joan has done until now. But there is "Disraeli" in the air, and two other roles which she will be signed for by the time this article is in press. Up to about fifteen months ago, Richard Bennett had seen all his children except Joan acquire distinction on the stage or screen. Often he would look rather wistfully at this strange child of so famous a stage family, thinking not of the heritage she received from him, but one that went back more than a century. Back through her mother's, Adrienne Morrison's, bloodstream, to Lewis Morrison, and the English actors, the Woods family, (Cont. on page 111) C[ She is only eighteen, with a year on the stage and a few months in the talkies as her whole Kenneth Alexander 55