It’s the night that changes everything for the main figures in Love Is a Crime: December 13, 1951, the day Walter Wanger shot a gun at Jennings Lang. Nearly 70 years later, podcast cohosts Karina Longworth and Vanessa Hope attempt to unpack “one of the biggest, most widely gossiped-about scandals in Hollywood history” in this week’s episode, “The Shooting.”
Down and out in Beverly Hills with a failing career as film producer, Wanger enlists a private eye to follow his wife, actor Joan Bennett and her agent, Lang. After receiving what he deemed to be incriminating evidence of their affair, Wanger unceremoniously shoots Lang. About a block from where the incident takes place is the Beverly Hills Police department, where Wanger is booked on “suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to commit murder.” (He’s freed from jail on bond after one night, and would later plead guilty to vastly reduced charges.) Meanwhile, Bennett is interrogated about her and Lang’s partnership, questions which she gamely dodged.
It wouldn’t be until her 1970 autobiography, The Bennett Playbill, that Joan would acknowledge she had “feelings that went beyond our business relationship” toward Lang. Still, the media had a field day with the shooting—placing Bennett front and center of the public narrative. “JOAN BENNETT SEES MATE SHOOT AGENT,” the Los Angeles Times front page read on December 14, alongside a photo of an unconscious Lang lying on an operating table. He would later make an incredibly forgiving statement about the ordeal and decline to press charges against Wanger. Despite his rosy outlook, suffice it to say, Lang and Bennett’s flame was quickly snuffed out.
As for Wanger, he would spend four months at what was called an honor farm—a minimum-security prison where most inmates completed agricultural labor tasks. He’d also be branded “the gun-toting hero” to Bennett’s perceived villain, according to Longworth. Bennett was criticized for releasing a public statement in which she referred to her husband’s bankruptcy proceedings as “his” and the Holmby Hills home they shared as “my.” Meanwhile, Wanger capitalized on his dangerous image. “Even though he spent time behind bars, there was a sense that Walter was sort of liberated by the shooting,” Longworth explained. “His attitude, before the honor farm and in his letters from there, give off the vibe that he was feeling good about himself, that he had taken his manhood back.”
Listen to the episode above, and be sure to listen next Tuesday, October 5, for more on Wanger’s post-shooting Hollywood reinvention. Subscribe at listen.vanityfair.com/loveisacrime or wherever you get your podcasts.
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