Walter Wanger

Walter Wanger
Born	Walter Feuchtwanger July 11, 1894(1894-07-11) San Francisco, California
Died	November 18, 1968(1968-11-18) (aged 74) New York City, New York
Spouse	Justine Johnstone (1919-1938) Joan Bennett (1940-1965)

Walter Wanger (July 11, 1894 – November 18, 1968) was an American film producer, an intellectual and a socially conscious movie executive who produced provocative message movies and glittering romantic melodramas.

Life and work

Wanger was born Walter Feuchtwanger in San Francisco, California, and pronounced "Wanger" to rhyme with "danger". He served with the United States Army during World War I, and attended Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

His career began at Paramount Pictures in the 1920s and led him to work at virtually every major studio as either a contract producer or an independent. Wanger served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1939 to October 1941 and from December 1941 to 1945.

Wanger married silent film actress Justine Johnstone in 1919. They divorced in 1938 and in 1940 he married Joan Bennett with whom he remained married until their divorce in 1965. They had two daughters, Stephanie (born 1943) and Shelley Antonia (born 1948), and Wanger adopted Bennett's daughter, Diana, by her marriage to Gene Markey. In 1950, Bennett signed with MCA agent Jennings Lang. In 1951, Wanger shot and wounded Lang after accusing him of having an affair with Bennett. Wanger's attorney, Jerry Giesler, 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.

Wanger was given an Honorary Academy Award in 1946 for his service as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He refused another honorary Oscar in 1949 for Joan of Arc, out of anger over the fact that the film, which he felt was one of his best, had not been nominated for Best Picture.

His 1958 production of I Want to Live! starred Susan Hayward in an anti-capital punishment film that is one of the most highly regarded films on the subject. Hayward won her only Oscar for her role in the film.

In May 1966, Wanger received the Commendation of the Order of Merit, Italy's third-highest honor, from Consul General Alvaro v. Bettrani, "for your friendship and cooperation with the Italian government in all phases of the motion picture industry."

Walter Wanger died of a heart attack, aged 74, in New York City. He was interred in the Home of Peace Cemetery in Colma, California.

Partial filmography

• The Sheik (1921)
• The Cocoanuts (1929)
• The Lady Lies (1929)
• Roadhouse Nights (1930)
• Tarnished Lady (1931)
• Gabriel Over the White House (1933)
• The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)
• Going Hollywood (1933)
• Queen Christina (1933)
• The President Vanishes (1934)
• Private Worlds (1935)
• Every Night at Eight (1935)
• The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936)
• History Is Made At Night (1937)
• Stand-In (1937)
• Trade Winds (1938)
• I Met My Love Again (1938)
• Stagecoach (1939)
• Foreign Correspondent (1940)
• Slightly Honorable (1940)
• The House Across the Bay (1940)
• Arabian Nights (1942)
• We've Never Been Licked (1943)
• Scarlet Street (1945)
• Salome Where She Danced (1945)
• Night in Paradise (1946)
• Canyon Passage (1946)
• Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman (1947)
• The Lost Moment (1947)
• Joan of Arc (1948)
• Secret Beyond the Door (1948)
• The Reckless Moment (1949)
• Kansas Pacific (1953)
• Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954)
• The Adventures of Hajji Baba (1954)
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
• Navy Wife (1956)
• I Want to Live! (1958)
• Cleopatra (1963)

Further reading

• Matthew Bernstein Walter Wanger, Hollywood Independent, University Of Minnesota Press, 2000
• Thomas Schatz The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era, Simon & Schuster, 1989

External links

• Walter Wanger at the Internet Movie Database
• Article on Wanger shooting Jennings Lang

Preceded by Bob Hope 12th Academy Awards

Oscars host 13th Academy Awards

Succeeded by Bob Hope 14th Academy Awards