The Beauty of Constance Bennett

Thanks to Fabulon for this delightful video for Constance Bennett Cosmetics, featuring (who else?) but Constance Bennett in what can best be described as a kitschy pitch for faux glamour. (I'm not saying the stuff wasn't wonderful; but the vintage advertorial is hardly realistic -- which is just one reason I love it!)



Another reason to love this old promo clip is Constance herself.

Constance was the eldest of the three daughters born to stage matinee idol Richard Bennett and actress/literary agent Adrienne Morrison in 1904. The middle sister was the least known sister, Barbara; she had a brief bit of fame as a dancer but is most known as the mother of talk show host Morton Downey. The youngest sister was Joan, who also found great film success; both Constance and Joan were enormously popular in the 30's, featured on the covers and inside pages of the popular movie magazines.



While Constance was the oldest, sister Joan joked of her sister, "With all of Constance's juggling of dates over the years, I started out as the youngest, then became her twin and finally wound up as the oldest sister."

The Bennetts were every bit as distinguished and as spirited another theatrical family, the Barrymores, which they were friends with. Richard was famous for having battles with critics of the day, writing scathing letters not only when his his performances were panned but when they were praised too. In fact, the entire Bennett family was known for their arguments with the press and Constance and Joan were no exception.

Constance may have gotten her start in film in one of daddy's films, but it was clear that both her beauty and talent would allow her to shine in her own right. Constance would appear in 57 films, several of which are considered true film classics.



Standouts include George Cukor's What Price Hollywood? (a 1932 early version of A Star Is Born, with Bennett in the role later played by Janet Gaynor, Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand), Topper (with Cary Grant in 1937) and the musical comedy Moulin Rouge (1934, in which Constance's singing voice is more than decent). Another fun film is Ladies in Love (1936), starring Janet Gaynor, Loretta Young, Don Ameche and Tyrone Power (in a small part which made him so popular that the studio groomed him for greater stardom). While this film doesn't exactly showcase Constance it is based on the play Three Girls by Ladislaus Bus-Fekete and the film's storyline would became studio standard, inspiring inspiring How to Marry a Millionaire (1953).

I urge you to watch whatever Constance Bennett films you can find -- just note that most of Contances' best work was done Pre-Code and that it looks like the icky code put the kibosh on her just as her star was rising. (Dammit!)

There are a number of sites which will list and review Bennett's films, so I'm going to dish on other matters, including, of course, her love life.

As mentioned, Constance Bennett, like the rest of her clan, feuded with the press and it is said that she 'enjoyed lawsuits'. Constance was never called "Connie" and was often described lovingly as "a steamroller" and a "headstrong girl" -- which might appear to be less than flattering, but it is quite apparent that Constance was intelligent, confident, determined and assertive. And all in a charming manner.

As her son, Peter Plant, said in an interview with Eve Golden (Films of the Golden Age, Issue No 11, Winter, 1997), "Today, a lot of people are horribly aggressive rather than pleasantly assertive." (Perhaps if you read the words "headstrong girl" and feel it is unattractive, you should ponder Plant's words.)


Also from that interview with Golden, titled The Public and Private Lives of Constance Bennett, is this bit on Constance regarding the cosmetic line and another failed business venture:

In the mid-1930s she developed her own line of cosmetics. As Plant says, "the cosmetics were a good, quality product, but at some point she gave someone a license or franchise for it, and he ended up putting nothing but lanoline in the jars, and it ruined the product." All that remains is a deliriously bizarre promotional short she made, which was released as Constance Bennett's Daily Beauty Rituals and shows up on TCM as filler once in a while. Constance also became involved in Fashion Frocks, "a dress line from the Midwest on which she put her name -- mail order dresses in women's magazines." That too failed. One of her drawbacks was that "she was very smart, but would not take advice -- she had a number of good advisors, but she had the idea that she was capable of doing things where she was in over her head."

Not taking advice, being headstrong, seems to have also had its up-side -- especially when dealing with studio heads.

While negotiating her contract with Warner Brothers, Constance insisted that Jack Warner pay both her agents fee and income tax along with a salary which would make her the highest-paid player up to that time ($300,000 for just two films).



Constance was also a highly skilled poker player -- one who was not just permitted to play in the "men only" games but most often won them too. It is said that when someone commented that Constance could not take her money with her, her father said, "If Constance can't take it with her, then she won't go."



You know the saying, 'lucky at cards, unlucky in love', well that might have been true for Constance. Or maybe she just loved to gamble; she was married five times.


First, in 1921, she eloped with Chester Hirst Moorehead (the son of a Chicago surgeon). Claiming that the marriage took place on a dare, she had the marriage annulled in 1923.

Next, in 1925 (the year her parents divorced), she eloped with millionaire socialite Philip Morgan Plant (son of Mrs. Mae Caldwell Manwaring Plant Hayward Rovensky and thus the adopted son of adopted son of steamship/railroad tycoon Morton F. Plant). When the couple divorced in 1929, Constance was awarded a $1 million settlement (consider this foreshadowing, folks).

In 1931 she made headlines when she married Henri le Bailly, the Marquis de La Coudraye de La Falaise (a French nobleman and film director who was one of Gloria Swanson's former husbands). About this time Constance brought back from Europe a three-year-old boy, Peter Bennett Plant, whom she said she'd adopted. Bennett and le Bailly founded Bennett Pictures Corp. and produced a couple of films. (Constance would also produce Paris Underground, released in 1945, for a total count of three films produced -- which is apparently how she makes it as a SIMPP member [Kindly disregard this info on the cosmetic & clothing companies; I'd believe the son over this info.]) Constance and the Marquis divorced in 1940.

In 1941, Constance married actor Gilbert Roland. Though Bennett and Roland would divorce in 1946, they would have two daughters: Lorinda (a sculptress) and Christina (aka Gyl Roland, an actress and image consultant). However when Philip Morgan Plant (husband number two) died in '41, a funny thing happened...

A large trust fund was established to benefit any descendants of Plant, and Constance went to battle saying that her adopted son, Peter Bennett Plant, actually was the natural child of both herself and the deceased Plant, born after the divorce and kept hidden in order to ensure that the child's biological father would not get custody. The story may sound a bit strange, but Constance won the claim for her son. According to Time in November of 1943:

Last week, when Plant's mother and his show-girl widow were fighting a court battle with Miss Bennett over the trust fund, she promised 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. Miss Bennett picked up her baggage and doll and returned to her theatrical mutton.

Later in 1946, the same year as her divorce from Roland, Constance married US Air Force Colonel John Theron Coulter (who would become later Brigadier General). They remained married until her death in 1965 and when Coulter passed in '95, he was buried beside her.


After her marriage to the colonel, Constance concentrated her efforts on the stage, radio and with providing relief entertainment to US troops (earning military honors for her services). She did return one last time to film in 1966's Madame X.

Playing Lana Turner's rich-bitch mother-in-law in the campy classic Constance looked frighteningly thin. This due to cancer, which no one but her immediate family knew about. Shortly after filming was completed, Bennett collapsed and died from a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 60. Madame X was released after her death.

In that 1997 interview, Plant this to say about his mother's work and her death:

"It was a grueling production experience," recalls Plant. "But my mother, knowing she would soon be gone, but being true to her profession, got through it fine."

"I'm sure her cancer was caused by smoking too bloody many Chesterfield cigarettes for too many years," says Plant, "and also due to taking massive injections of hormones in the 1950s to preserve her figure and make her appear younger than she was. I could name several of her female star peers who met the same fate pursuing their youthfulness."

Constance died on July 24, 1965, in the Watson Army Hospital in Fort Dix, New Jersey and as Eve Golden wrote:

By that time, Joan had surpassed her in reputation as an actress; Constance was recalled in her obituaries as more of a "glamor girl." Not long before she died, she said of her professional longevity, "If there's a secret to it, it's working like a beaver to be happy. What I mean is, I've always been interested in everything I did. When you're that interested in anything, you're happy.

I'm still interested in you, Constance. And I hope that makes us both happy.



For more on Constance Bennett, read The Bennett Playbill by Joan Bennett and The Bennetts: An Acting Family by Brian Kellow.

There's also a neat Constance Bennette thread at TMC.

Images of vintage movie magazines via www.classichollywoodbios.com.

Some other photos of Constance Bennett via venusnaturalis at Flickr and here.

Constance Bennett 1904 - 1965