Vanessa: December 3rd, 1947. Interior, a conference room at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, New York City. Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture Association of America addresses and assembled group of 50 Wall Street, bankers, legal advisors, and top Motion Picture executives and producers, including Walter Wanger. Every person in the room is white and male. 

Eric Johnston [Reenactment]: "We are here today to consider the problems posed by the subversive and disloyal activities of persons connected with our industry today, all of the Hollywood 10 had been indicted for contempt of Congress." 

Vanessa: A low murmur travels across the room at this news.

Eric Johnston [Reenactment]: "Public opinion is beginning to snowball. Many Americans believe the industry is harboring communists. We have two choices. We could fire each member of the Hollywood 10, or we let them continue working at the studios and endanger our reputations even further with the ticket buyers." 

Vanessa: Debate begins. Walter leans into the man seated to his right, his friend and fellow independent producer, Samuel Goldwyn.

Walter Wanger [Reenactment]: "Didn't we reject this proposal when Johnston suggested it last June. Even if there are known communists, wouldn't firing them run us a foul of the labor code of California?" 

Samuel Goldwyn [Reenactment]: "And that's if we know for sure they're communists. Most of the time there's no proof, but what are we going to do? Look around if we vote nay this time they'll go after us next. 

Vanessa: On the other side of Walter sits another executive, Dore Schary who now leans over to join the confab. 

Dore Schary [Reenactment]: "Eddie Mannix's friend Jim is with us, but he says it's a done deal. The substance of the agreement has already been composed and bedded by MPA lawyers. We're not really here to debate. We're here to fall in line." 

Eric Johnston [Reenactment]: "Let's take it to a vote. All who agree to discharge or suspend without compensation those in our employ and to not knowingly employ a communist or a member of any party or group, which advocates the overthrow of the government of the United States by force or by any illegal or unconstitutional methods, say I,"

Vanessa: As Walter and Sam turn to look at one another, a chorus rises up around them. 

Eric Johnston [Reenactment]: "Goldwin, what's your vote?" 

Vanessa: Samuel Goldwyn locks, eyes with Walter. 

Samuel Goldwyn [Reenactment]: "I" 

Eric Johnston [Reenactment]: "And you Wanger?"

Walter Wanger [Reenactment]: "I"

Karina: What you just heard was a dramatization of the signing of the Waldorf Statement. In its simplest terms, this statement was the paperwork that authorized the Hollywood blacklist. Under this blacklist, dozens of Hollywood workers were fired, denied work, or forced to work under assumed names for much reduced salaries. It lasted for more than a decade. It was all set in motion in 1947, when the House un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed 41 writers, directors, and producers. 19 of them announced their refusal to cooperate with the committee. 10 of those 19, who were soon known as the Hollywood 10, were indicted for contempt of Congress and ultimately served time in prison. After the contempt charges, the Hollywood studios and powerful independent producers had an opportunity to stand up to the HUAC politicians and say they would not allow their employees to be persecuted without evidence they had committed crimes. Instead, they completely caved. Hollywood's power brokers were then fighting against the federal government's consent decree that would ultimately force them to give up control of their movie theaters. And they were still hoping that a compromise with the feds could be reached to prevent that eventuality. So they wanted to look co-operative. The Hollywood blacklist had real impact on human lives. Careers were ruined, and people actually died from the health issues exacerbated by the stress from their persecution. And in the climate that allowed all of this to happen, even people who were not actually blacklisted felt the reverberations of the blacklist. One of the people who felt those reverberations was one of the men who voted to make the blacklist happen, Walter Wanger. I'm Karina longworth. 

Vanessa: I'm Vanessa Hope 

Karina: Today on Love is a Crime, the personal political, professional, and financial problems that brought Walter Wanger to the brink.

Walter's capitulation to the Waldorf Statement is shocking because he had built his career on the quest to make entertaining films that promoted progressive messages and values. Maybe by the time Walter was in that room, he had seen the writing on the wall. 

Vanessa: I think Walter would have felt really compromised by having to go along with the Waldorf Statement. I think Eric Johnston from the Motion Picture Association of America, the MPAA, basically railroaded all of the studio executives into agreeing to this document that was already pre-planned and they were going to be locked in and not allowed to leave and not allowed to disagree. So at that point, just being an executive in the room, put you in the position of forced agreement. 

Karina: Many of the men who outed suspected communists did so to remove a target from their own backs. This seems to have been the case with Walter who was aware by December 1947, that HUAC viewed his war time activities as tantamount to support of communism. 

Vanessa: Walter had never been in any way pro communist, but he didn't care if the people working for him were. So his record was on display on day one of the October 1947 House un-American Activities Committee hearings. They cited his hiring of leftist writer, Dorothy Parker, his work with ex Screenwriters Guild president Dudley Nichols, who wrote "Stagecoach," "The Long Voyage Home," and "Scarlet Street," and John Lawson, the leading member of Hollywood's communist group who wrote three films for Walter. So the House un-American Activities Committee really had Walter in their sites from the beginning, but he made no public response to these citations and apparently they didn't immediately impact his buisness.

Karina: During the war Wanger had criticized a group of Hollywood right-wingers called the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals for having quote, "linked throughout the nation, the word Hollywood and red, without proof." By 1947, the Alliance had become extremely powerful and had actually fed information to Congress about people they perceive to be against their cause, people like Walter Wanger. The only way for someone with a background like Walter's to protect themselves, was to go all in on blacklisting. Ideally by naming names that would allow the blacklist to continue to proliferate. But Walter wasn't going to do that, and soon as Wanger was increasingly subjected to continued harassment from a number of institutions, he began to feel that he was being punished. For not falling in line.

Vanessa: Beginning in 1948 Walter's company was operating in a crisis atmosphere and his employees found it pretty debilitating. 

Matthew Bernstein: He could barely pay his overhead bills for his office and his company, 

Vanessa: This is Walter's biographer, Matthew Bernstein. 

Matthew Bernstein: He couldn't pay the salaries of his assistants. One of his associates at the time told me he was so busy trying to arrange the making of the next film he had no time to focus on the film he was making in the present. He had no source of income and after making all this money during the war years, the IRS undertook these audits of his income at that time. And they demanded all these back payments. 

Karina: The IRS continued to audit Wanger over several years and knowing Walter was in a financial hole, they began to demand immediate payment of back taxes. In a letter to two close friends Walter confided that the stress was taking its toll. As with much of his correspondence, as well as professional and private memos, Walter recorded himself dictating this letter, and we have audio from that dictaphone tape courtesy of Vanessa's aunt Shelley Wanger. 

Walter Wanger: Things are still pretty confused in the motion picture industry, and I still have quite a few problems myself. However, I feel very strongly that I have, uh, had some pretty unfortunate things attempted on my enterprises and I am fighting to the last ditch. I'm very optimistic about the future, but I must say between the taxes and the lawyer, I don't see the very happy financial picture for the moment. Unless something new develops. 

Karina: The panic caused by the audits was so sudden, so onerous, and so painfully timed that it looked like there must be some kind of ulterior motive. 

Vanessa: I know that the FBI used the IRS to audit people whose private lives and public reputations they wanted to destroy because they could bring them down financially. J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI were focused on keeping America white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant, and anyone who didn't fit that bill was on their radar to be discriminated against and persecuted. So Walter was on their radar for all the reasons we've already cited, but then he would have been targeted because he was German, Jewish, internationalist, independent, a powerful cultural and political influence, a public figure who made speeches, who headed left-leaning organizations, and someone who had communist relatives.

Karina: One of the people who was more forcefully targeting suspected communists in Hollywood at this time was gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. In fact, by this point, Hopper and FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover had been swapping incriminating information for years, as part of their plot to take down celebrities who they felt were un-American. Their biggest coup involved the smearing of Charlie Chaplin. By 1950, the gossip columnist and the FBI chief had done immeasurable damage to Chapin's reputation and career, and within two years they would manage to force him into exile in Switzerland. Joan had her own contentious relationship with the powerful gossip columnist, which dated back to 1938, when Hopper had disparaged Joan's make-over in the image of Heddy Lamarr. Over the years, Hopper would snipe about Joan's marriages, even at one point suggesting that Walter quote, "counsel his bride so she'll know when to speak her peace, and when to keep quiet." Given that Hedda has seemed to take special pleasure in picking on Joan, it's amazing joan managed to keep quiet as long as she did. By February, 1950, Joan had had enough and she launched two attacks on Hopper. The first was prompted by a piece Hedda had written about Bennett's friend, Joan Fontaine, in which Hopper shamed Fontaine for being an exhibitionist after she was seen dancing at a party. 

Vanessa: Joan took out an ad on Valentine's day and circled with a heart Hedda's attacks on Joan Fontaine next to a heart shaped circle around the words of another columnist demanding higher standards in movie industry journalism with the headline in all caps, "Can this be you Hedda?" and that wasn't all Joan did. She actually sent a skunk to Hedda's house with a note suggesting that the skunk be Hedda's Valentine with a little poem. 

Karina: Joan's poem is an incredible testament to her wit, as well as her facility with language and not just English, she cleverly used the French phrase, de trop, which means too much. The poem read, "Be my filthy Valentine, little peas in a pod. Oh, how divine. For just like you, I am de trop and also leave a horrible scent wherever I go." This special delivery was highly publicized. All of the other entertainment writers in Hollywood filled their columns with the Hopper Bennett feud. In one story, Joan defended herself.

Joan Bennett [Reenactment]: "I've been in victim of her attacks for many, many years. I've often wanted to express my feelings, but this was the first opportunity."

Karina: Between the Joan Fontaine item and the Valentines skunk, Hedda visited "The Father of the Bride" set and wrote an item underlining the unfortunate fact that director Vincent Minnelli was more interested in taking glamorous closeups of Elizabeth Taylor than a 40 year old Joan. Joan's best friend and publicist was Maggie Ettinger, cousin and bestie of Hedda's chief gossip columnist rival, Louella Parsons. Both Louella and Hedda had their favorite stars. And Joan was so close to being part of Louella's family that she probably never had a chance of Hedda treating her fairly. But it was still incredibly dangerous for any star to publicly attack such a powerful columnist. 

Vanessa: I just find it funny that Joan was ballsy enough to go after one of two major gossip columnists dominating film industry news. To make an obvious enemy of Hedda Hopper. Though maybe more than half the industry would have been cheering her on for her fearlessness and might've been grateful, Hedda was notoriously tight with J. Edgar Hoover. So this would have given the FBI yet more reason to go after the Wangers if they needed them. 

Karina: But Joan's attacks on Hedda didn't have immediate consequences on her career because when "Father of the Bride" was released in the summer of 1950, it became a massive hit. And obviously the kind of instant classic that lives on as the most valuable thing in today's Hollywood, enduring IP. At the age of 40, Joan Bennett had survived another career transition. MGM, the studio behind "Father of the Bride" immediately rushed a sequel into production. Walter, meanwhile, was still trying to make something, anything happen with his career.

Walter had always thought of himself as being ahead of the curve in Hollywood, but now he began to feel as though he had been left behind. As he told one gossip columnist, 

Walter Wanger [Reenactment]: "Hollywood is a strange, cruel place. When you're down on your luck, you run out of friends." 

Karina: The ethos that had driven Walter throughout his 20 plus year career had fallen out of fashion. His true passion was the power of cinema to communicate progressive ideas and ideals. Some in Hollywood may have already felt some resentment toward Wanger because of what they perceived as his tendency to lecture. Then the political climate changed too. With the blacklist underway, anyone who had a history of lefty or anti-fascist activism was being forced to explain themselves. And in many cases, repent. Perhaps sensing that he needed to show he was on the right side, in the fall of 1950, Walter joined something called the Crusade for Freedom. 

Vanessa: The Crusade for Freedom was a fundraising campaign that served to shield the fact that the CIA financed radio free Europe and the committee for a free Europe. With Walter's help the group organized a national fundraising campaign in September 1950 to place an eight foot high freedom bell that had traveled all over the United States at the Berlin airport on United Nations Day. 

Karina: In a letter to General Lucius Clay, the chairman of the crusade, Walter posited the project as an advertising campaign for the United States as the world leader in capitalism. Here's audio of a portion of that letter from Walter's dictaphone tapes. 

Walter Wanger: United States of America is the greatest business in the world today, and we are seeking as customers and followers, the ordinary people, the masses of the world in order to win them over we must have an advertising campaign. Commensurate with the potential of our market. Instead of that, we have practically no advertising campaign. The Marshall Plan was a brilliant and great concept, but never properly presented. The Russians are presenting their problems to the masses through mass media and outflanking us when we, uh, were ones who developed all of these, all of the signs of communication. This is a ridiculous situation. And the proof that the Russians are fearful of what we could do if we ever awoke is the iron curtain, which is the greatest compliment to our way of life could exist. 

Karina: The crusade counted amongst its members some of Hollywood's most prominent right wingers including, Ronald Reagan, Cecil B. DeMille and Darryl Zanuck. Another member was reactionary California state Senator, Jack Tenney.

Vanessa: He had actually led California's version of HUAC, The House un-American Activities Committee in 1948. When Walter was appointed to the Crusade for Freedom, Jack Tenney promptly resigned and claimed Walter had been associated with subversive groups earlier in the decade, and basically he didn't want to belong to any organization that Walter was a part of. Several members of the Crusade for Freedom seconded Tenney's accusations that Walter was a notorious communist appeaser. I did find it fascinating that his own record was so at issue because he associated with an organization called Films for Democracy in the 1930s, these red scare people were very confused by organizations with democracy in the title. They somehow never believed that it was about that. 

Matthew Bernstein: A lot of this HUAC stuff, a lot of this anticommunist stuff was, I mean, it was directed at jews, at new dealers. You know, people who supported FDR. FDR was gone, now we've got a new, you know, we've got a new regime with the iron curtain. Let's go to town on this. The America first party anti-Semitism. So I think with Walter he found some ripe low-hanging fruit and, and he went after it and he made the most of it.

Karina: In 1950, Walter received a letter from John Wayne, who was then the leader of the Motion Picture Alliance, the group Walter had questioned for their red hunting tactics back in 1944. Wayne now offered Wanger a chance to quote, "correct our former disagreement," and in turn, Walter responded with a statement that was published in newspapers nationwide. 

Walter Wanger [Reenactment]: "I recognize that time and history have proven the correctness of the judgment of the Motion Picture Alliance and its foresight in recognizing the communist menace." 

Karina: But this wasn't the end. It was barely the beginning.

Vanessa: This all gets really dark, really fast. Tenney's accusations against Walter inspired the FBI to open a file on him. The FBI informant suggested that Walter telephone be tapped, so not only were the FBI on Walter, but he had joined a secret CIA front organization without knowing it. The Crusade for Freedom drive concluded in October 1950 and three months later, The Bank of America took action against Walter to force him to file for bankruptcy for not paying back loans on the "Reckless Moment."

Karina: The Bank of America had a long history of loaning to independent producers. Amadeo Giannini the first generation Italian American who chaired the bank's Los Angeles branches until 1945, had provided a maverick named Walt Disney with a crucial investment that allowed him to make his first film, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." So the bank understood how a producer like Walter worked and they were not in the habit of forcing someone like him to pay back his loans before they made back their money on a subsequent film. But this is exactly what the bank now did with Walter. Why? In his biography of Walter, Matthew Bernstein connected the dots. 

Matthew Bernstein: In January 51, the Bank of America charges him with involuntary bankruptcy for the loan. And it seems like from my research, the bank was acting in part on these attacks on Walter, that he was a communist and it did not relent when he tried to set the record straight. 

Karina: The Bank of America happened to be managed by Mario Giannini, Amadeo's son, who was also the Pacific Coast coordinator for the Crusade for Freedom.

Vanessa: Giannini was receiving all this information about Walter directly from Jack Tenney and Walter's other accusers and it was biasing him against Walter when it came to calling in his debts on his movies and forcing him to declare bankruptcy. 

Karina: On January 9th, 1951, the Bank of America took Walter to court over his failure to repay $178,500, which was about a third of the loan that he had borrowed to finance "The Reckless Moment," this threw Walter's whole financial situation into utter disarray. Walter could not pay the debt in full, so the bank tried to attach Joan Bennett's beloved Holmby Hills house as collateral. This was Joan's nightmare.

Vanessa: The Holmby Hills house was the dream home Joan had built for her family after achieving some success in Hollywood. So it really meant a lot to her stability, security, success, the neighborhood, and community around it, including her sister Constance who live nearby. 

Karina: So to sum up, Walter had joined a right-wing organization because he thought it would clear him of his past left-wing associations and allow him to start rebuilding his career in a blacklist world. Instead two members of that right-wing organization effectively drove his reputation even further into the ground. Jack Tenney, by publicly branding Walter a communist sympathizer and Mario Giannini by taking him to court over a debt that under any other circumstance Walter would have been given much more time to pay back. Because of the bankruptcy suit, Walter's wife's house, her most beloved possession, was now in danger of being taken away from her. The Bennett Wanger marriage was not in a good place and this certainly didn't help. As Walter would later reflect, 

Walter Wanger [Reenactment]: "For two years, things had been getting worse and worse. I had had problems before, and I always knew something would turn up to straighten them out, but this time I began to worry. Maybe my luck was running out. The Bank of America was trying to put me in bankruptcy involving the house in a mortgage claim so any debt could be put against the house. Senator Tenney trying to make me out of red sympathizer, my inability to make any deals that would solve my problems and on and on they gathered. How could I have been so careless to find myself in this dilemma?" 

Karina: Walter turned to an unlikely savior, Jennings Lang. Lang had taken over the television department at MCA and he truly believed the medium was the future of the entertainment business. Walter had been excited by the prospect of developing films for television, something that hadn't yet been done.

Vanessa: Walter proposed a color version of "Aladdin" as a series for ABC, and they shot the pilot and shopped it to sponsors for financing. Ultimately, it didn't get picked up because TV wasn't in color yet, only black and white, and they weren't doing film shows for television, it was all live. Again, he was ahead of his time.

Karina: Walter had enthusiastically worked with Jennings in early 1950. Wanger dictated several letters expressing confidence in both the agent and his own future and television. 

Walter Wanger: Take a letter to Milton Bill in New York saying "My dear Milton, just to wish you a very happy New Year and a prosperous one and want to let you know that Jennings Lang of MCA has arrived in New York to look after my television interests amongst other things and, uh, I wish I'd see him sometime." "Dear Harry," uh, this is to my brother, "thank you very much for calling yesterday. I hope I'll be able to work this deal out satisfactorily to all concerned. In the meantime, Jennings Lang of MCA has arrived in New York to handle my television activities, and I think it'd be a good idea if you had them over for a drink or for dinner, he's a very able and intelligent guy."

Karina: But around the same time, Walter's correspondence with Jennings himself reveals Walter's increasing nervousness and desperation regarding his career and his bank balance. 

Walter Wanger: Take a note to Jennings Lang. "Dear Jennings, um, we're waiting patiently for the contract with ABC regarding "Aladdin" back from New York." Mail me a letter to Jennings Lang, "Dear Jennings, thank you very much for, uh, everything that you've done for me and especially what you're doing for Joan. Uh, Joan has been very much upset about the situation which I knew she would be. The first and best thing that could happen for my situation across the if that RCA job, as a consultant. Especially on films could be worked out with Pat Weaver, and then I got that uh retainer, so that there would be some income evolving out here. And, uh, the dealers, you know, envisaged, RCA putting up, uh, money for the pilot films I wanted to make getting fresh crack at it. But so far, nothing has gelled at all as you know, and, uh, in the interim I'm willing to do about most anything including uh, MC'ing on shows or for film, film programs locally. I hope you'll be able to get something started and I'm not particularly along unless there's some income. With all the best from John Rosso, she herself and all the boys and girls.

Karina: With his own TV prospects unclear, Walter took the liberty of pitching a new television idea for his wife. To the man his wife was having an affair with. The concept was sort of a proto version of today's daytime talk shows, in which celebrity women speak to issues of concern to non-celebrity women. Walter planned to pair Joan with Pamela Mason, the wife of her "Reckless Moment," co-star, James Mason. 

Walter Wanger: None of memoranda, Jennings Lang. "Dear Jennings, here is the greatest proposition you've ever been allowed to handle. Joan Bennett and Pamela Mason, as mistresses ceremony on a half hour show with audience participation. The most important people participation panel based on letters from all over the country. Problems regarding the rest of the problems regarding children, adolescents, anything from diaper to divorce will be answered by these two outstanding authorities. This should be the H bomb of TV. Every woman in the country, and every adolescent should be listening and watching. 

Karina: This show never came to fruition and the situation reached a breaking point shortly after the new year. 

Vanessa: In January 1951, Joan and Walter were deeply in debt and Joan was working 10 times as hard to bring in money to support their family. She was doing all kinds of radio shows and print and television ads and any work in television that Jennings Lang could get her. Jennings came up with the idea for Joan to be in a TV series called "Originals by Bennett," which he would host each week and it would really help them out financially. So Joan and Walter flew to New York to discuss it in greater detail with Jennings and then Walter realized that the show would need to film in New York. He flew into a rage because he was aware of Joan's relationship with Jennings at this point and assumed that it would allow them greater freedom to carry on an affair away from California. He didn't want to lose Joan and he wanted to keep their family together. So he dashed Joan's plans for hosting a show in New York. 

Karina: This was more cataclysmic for Joan's marriage than for her career. By the time the sequel to "Father of the Bride," "Fathers Little Dividend" was released in April 1951, Joan and Jennings affair was at full steam. In addition to their afternoon meetings at Jay Kanter's apartment, they traveled together and met up in public.

Vanessa: Hollywood is a fishbowl, right? So it's hard to hide from your friends and colleagues when you're on top of each other most of the time and under a looking glass with the world looking in all the time. But I do think that Jennings and Joan were attempting to be discrete. They would arrive at parties separately with other people or alone at different times, and they would leave separately maybe closer to the same time, but that's not necessarily a tip off to infidelity. I think they were certainly under the cover of a professional relationship, which would warrant them meeting up or at least talking together in public. 

Karina: Around this time, Walter, with his tail between his legs signed a two year, three film contract with Monogram, a B movie studio, which specialized in cheaply made fare, designed to quickly exploit fads and niche markets like drive-ins and thus, the term exploitation film. Walter felt he had been forced to take a position that was beneath him. And as Matthew Bernstein says he wasn't wrong.

Matthew Bernstein: I mean, he's gone from being the production executive at Paramount, the most powerful studio of the twenties, and then a production executive at MGM, which was the most popular studio in the thirties. And he was making prestige films for release through United Artists, and he was really valued at Universal, that he produced "Joan of Arc," and now he's at a low budget studio that can't even get its films into first run theaters. He was utterly humiliated by this. 

Karina: According to Joan Bennett, psychologically, this is when her husband hit bottom. 

Joan Bennett [Reenactment]: "The damage to his ego and pride was enormous. With the memory of past success, he recoiled violently from present failure."

Karina: According to Bernstein, Joan asked Walter for a divorce and Walter refused. As Walter later wrote, 

Walter Wanger [Reenactment]: "I love my wife and family, and I had no desire for any change. And yet I observed Joan changing from day to day in a hardened new code of behavior and an attitude so foreign and distant and bitter that it was quite obvious to me that our marriage had entered a new phase and a dire one. I did not want to see this change occur and was ready to do all I could to stop it." 

Matthew Bernstein: So, I mean, I think, you know, one of the questions is what if Walter hadn't been having all these business problems? Would he have taken it so hard that she was having an affair, you know? And I think that's a really, it's an impossible question to answer, but I think it's a question that puts things in some kind of perspective. There are all these things he can't do anything about, but he thinks this is something he can do something about. And he does. 

Karina: Next time on Love is a Crime, Walter Wanger takes desperate action, and when the smoke clears Joan will be the one under fire.

Love is a Crime is a Vanity Fair presentation in partnership with Cadence 13. Executive produced, created, written, and hosted by Vanessa Hope and Karina Longworth. Starring Zooey Deschanel as Joan Bennett, John Ham as Walter Wanger, Bobby Finger from the podcast "Who Weekly" as Eric Johnston, Nate DeMeio from the "Memory Palace" as Samuel Goldwyn, and John August from "Script Notes" as Dore Schary.

Vanessa: Our executive producer is Chris Corcoran and our showrunner is Jacquelyn Jamjoom. Production support provided by Nico Steele, Julia Doyle, Tony Mantia and Lindsay D Shoenholtz. Theme music by Lionel Cohen and Vyybes. Audio produced and supervised by Shelby Comstock Britten and mixed by Gintas Norvilla and Rainhouse. Special thanks to Katey Rich from Vanity Fair and Julie Shen and Kelly Bales from Condé Nast. 

Karina: Love is a Crime was written by Vanessa Hope and Karina Longworth who consulted the following published sources in researching this episode. "The Bennetts: An Acting Family," by Brian Kellow published by the University Press of Kentucky, used by permission from the University Press of Kentucky. "Walter Wanger, Hollywood Independent," by Matthew Bernstein, published by the University of Minnesota Press used by permission from University of Minnesota Press. "The Bennett Playbill," by Joan Bennett published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston used by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. The Joan Bennett estate and the Lois Kibbee estate. This episode includes an interview with Matthew Bernstein and excerpts from Walter Wanger's dictaphone tapes courtesy of Shelley Wanger. Fact checking by Laura Bullard.