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Constance Bennett: Father
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Constance Bennett was the eldest of three daughters born to theatrical luminary Richard Bennett and his wife, actress Adrienne Morrison. Though her father did everything he could to discourage her from pursuing an acting career, Constance was willful and rebellious almost from the moment of her birth. She tried to break away from Daddy's influence by marrying at age 16, but the union was quickly annulled. At 17, Constance was signed to a Goldwyn movie contract on the strength of her family name. She treated her silent-film career as a lark, but along the way she developed a superb sense of comic timing and an instinctive gift for heavy dramatics.
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Constance Bennett was another independent producer who made films at the General Service Studio, released through United Artists, and maintained a SIMPP membership. Bennett was an industry veteran with experience as an actor that went back to the days of Lewis J. Selznick, the father of Myron and David O. Selznick. She entered films through her father, matinee idol Richard Bennett, who starred in Samuel Goldwyn's first independent production The Eternal City (1923). A chance meeting between Sam Goldwyn and Constance lead to her emergence as a Hollywood performer in 1924.
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Constance Bennett was as assertive with studio heads as she was with the press. While negotiating a contract with Warner Brothers, being the shrewd, clever businesswoman that she was, Constance insisted that Jack Warner pay her agents fee and income tax as well as her high salary. If a male actor had managed this deal in the thirties it would have been unusual. For a woman to manage such a thing in those days was unheard of. What actor today could get the studio to pay his or her income tax off the top? When it was once commented that Constance could not take her money with her, her father Richard said, "If Constance can't take it with her, then she won't go."
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Bennett eloped with millionaire socialite Philip Morgan Plant (died 1941) in 1925, they divorced in 1929. In 1932, Bennett brought back from Europe a three-year-old child, whom she claimed to have adopted and named Peter Bennett Plant. In 1942... during a battle over a large trust fund established to benefit any descendants of her former husband, Bennett announced that her adopted son actually was her natural child by Plant, born after the divorce and kept hidden in order to ensure that the child's biological father did not get custody. During the court hearings, the actress told her former mother-in-law and her husband's widow that "if she got to the witness stand she would give a complete account of her life with Plant. The matter was settled out of court." [1][2]
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Like her father Richard and sister Joan, fiercely independent Constance loved a good fight, especially if it happened to be with critics or other members of the press. Eventually it was this defiance that alienated her from the film industry's powers-that-be and seemed ... to have essentially ended her film career. One thing that can be said for her, Constance was as indifferent to their opinions on her way down as she was on her way up.
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