Vanessa: Interior Jay Kanter's apartment, South Palm Drive, Beverly Hills. Joan and Jennings embrace, and just as quickly disbursed to opposite ends of the living room Jennings pours Joan a drink. 

Joan Bennett [Reenactment]: "Walter's become moodier, colder, more menacing." 

Jennings Lang [Reenactment]: "What's the worst you think had happened." 

Joan Bennett [Reenactment]: "Really could it get any worse? He feels everyone's against him and nothing is going his way. Can you blame him?" 

Jennings Lang [Reenactment]: "Well, not a good time to ask for a divorce." 

Joan Bennett [Reenactment]: "Absolutely not." 

Jennings Lang [Reenactment]: "Can I lighten the mood?" 

Joan Bennett [Reenactment]: "Lighten the mood? Rescue a sinking ship is more like it. You're doing just fine helping me keep my family off skid row, thank you." 

Jennings Lang [Reenactment]: "Another reason Walter wants to kill me." 

Joan Bennett [Reenactment]: "Walter killing you would definitely be the worst thing that could happen."

Karina: What you just heard is a dramatization of a conversation that may or may not have actually happened. We know now that on December 13th, 1951, Walter Wanger shot a gun at Jennings Lang. Nearly 70 years later, we don't know what Walter's intentions were. We don't know if he actually wanted to kill the man he suspected of having an affair with his wife. But we do know something about what was going on in all three of their lives in the months leading up to the shooting, and we know a lot about the immediate aftermath. When 41 year old Joan Bennett found herself at the center of one of the biggest, most widely gossiped about scandals in Hollywood history. I'm Karina Longworth, and 

Vanessa: I'm Vanessa Hope. 

Karina: Today on Love is a Crime, we'll meet up with Joan, Jennings, and Walter in mid 1951 and watch as the final dominos fall in the run-up to Walter's outburst of violence. And then, we'll drop you right inside the media frenzy that exploded after Walter's gun went off, altering the lives of Joan, Walter, and their extended families forever.

Joan spent the summer of 1951 working while also working on her relationship with Melinda, her now teenage daughter from her marriage to Gene Markey. 

Vanessa: According to my mother who was in elementary school at the time, Joan's relationship with Melinda who is about to graduate high school was always contentious because Melinda developed early, was voluptuous and beautiful, and interested in boys. So Joan no doubt based on her own personal life experiences was worried on Melinda's behalf and wanted her to be more careful and conservative, and Melinda was rebelling against. Melinda also wanted to be an actress like Joan, and I think Joan felt some responsibility to help her the way her father had helped Joan get her start in a play. So Joan agreed to appear in a play with Melinda called "Susan and God," in which they would play mother and daughter. They began at the LA Jolla Playhouse in a successful run that led to a tour of the Summer Stock circuit in New England. I don't know how much that helped them bond because ultimately Jennings was visiting Joan on the road and Melinda did have a sense that their relationship was going on, but Jennings was nice to Melinda so apparently she didn't mind. 

Karina: Even if Joan's 17 year old daughter suspected that something might be going on between her mother and her mother's agent, it wouldn't have been unusual for Melinda to see him and Joan together. At this point, Jennings Lang was a family friend. 

Vanessa: One interesting aspect to the fact that Jennings and Joan had an affair is that as married couples, Joan, Walter, Jennings, and Pamela all socialize together, they were friends. They would go to dinner at each other's houses, go out to restaurants and clubs. 

Karina: In her a memoir, "The Bennett Playbill," published in 1970, Joan would address her relationship with Jennings Lang more directly than she ever did in any other public venue. But even then this woman who is trained extremely well by Hollywood publicists from a very young age, leaves much open to interpretation. She does make it clear that at one point while Walter was out of town, likely in Europe trying to resurrect his career, Joan became quote "stricken with a sudden illness."

Vanessa: Joan is very vague about dates in her book, especially concerning this period. Reading between the lines, it sounds like her hospitalization happened after she returned from Summer Stock with Melinda in the fall of 1951, and this is when I think her affair with Jennings went to the next level. 

Karina: When Joan's illness hit, Jennings Lang took her to the hospital and took care of her in more ways than one. As Joan wrote, 

Joan Bennett [Reenactment]: "Suddenly I was offered the sympathy and gentleness I found lacking at home. And I turned to Jennings more often after that, with feelings that went beyond our business relationship." 

Karina: This is the extent of what Joan would write about her affair and she offered no details about the cause for her hospitalization. But Vanessa has a theory. 

Vanessa: I have this gut feeling that the sudden illness that required a hospital visit was a miscarriage. Joan was 41 in 1951, which is an age when miscarriages are common and miscarriage is a subject we really don't talk about even now. That's why I think that Joan would not have named the cause of her sudden illness and hospitalization and why the experience might've been really traumatic and caused her to invest more deeply in her relationship with Jennings. She was emotionally devastated and uniquely vulnerable and Walter wasn't there, but her agent was. 

Karina: Though Walter was responsible for dropping the ball on his own marriage, he was dismayed to see the extent to which Lang had picked that ball up. Walter's resentment of young handsome, successful Jennings was becoming increasingly apparent.

Vanessa: One particular photograph comes to mind where there are the club El Morocco, Walter and Joan, Jennings and Pamela, and you can see Walter has an inkling for what's going on and he's giving Jennings some serious side eye. 

Karina: Actress, Arlene Dahl, who got to know the Wangers while as starring in Walter's French revolution noir film "Reign of Terror" in 1949, would later state that people in Hollywood were starting to worry that Walter was going to quote, "do something drastic about Jennings Lang." Walter had allegedly tried to convince his friend Jules Stein, founder of MCA, to fire Jennings. Something that would never happen because Lang was too valuable an agent and because in 1951, a powerful man's sex life was generally considered to be his own business. Before Walter did something drastic he wanted to secure proof of the affair. Perhaps to inoculate himself in advance against any consequences for a drastic act of violence. So he hired a private detective who tracked Joan and Jennings for months. Now, Walter had evidence that his wife and her agent had met up in New Orleans, in the West Indies and at Jay Kanter's apartment in Beverly Hills. This evidence Walter felt would justify taking action. 

Vanessa: Well, to sympathize with Walter, what he was experiencing in learning about Joan's infidelity would have been emotionally devastating. It's like having the rug of your life pulled out from under you. The narrative that you believed in was holding your life together suddenly makes no sense, and you have nothing to hold on to, and you're trying to figure out what's going on and why, and maybe you're going about it the wrong way, just collecting details so you can get revenge. But that whole way of looking at Joan and thinking about her also recalls the fact that marriage traditionally was a setup where women relinquished their individual rights and property and became property themselves. So really until recently, marital fidelity and monogamy had nothing to do with love. They were just a mainstay of patriarchy and a way to ensure that a woman was the mother of her husband's children and not some other man's. This is a motivating force in surveillance, treating a wife like a piece of property. I think surveillance is the wrong approach when you're married to someone and concerned they might be cheating on you because it's a detective approach, a kind of who, what, where, when as opposed to an investigative approach, which really asks why? What was the meaning and motive, and allows a couple to acknowledge and discuss their joint responsibility and culpability. But detective details are a form of self torture when you're being cheated on, and you're using surveillance to gather information and that information isn't going to make you feel better. It's only going to make you feel worse, and that's really true today because the majority of affairs are revealed through email or social media or iPhone photos. And once you've seen images or read words of the person, you love having an affair, you're going to keep replaying that in your mind and it's like death by a thousand cuts. It's really, really unhealthy. 

Karina: Walter is detective submitted a report, which was found in Wanger car the night of the shooting. By this point, Joan and Jennings had been using Jay Kanter's apartment for months. And we know that Walter felt Jennings and his agency, MCA, had helped to create Walter's humiliating professional situation. And here Wanger's paranoia may have been justified. 

Vanessa: I think it's possible that Jennings Lang might have been working to make sure Walter's projects that would star Joan would not happen so that Jennings and MCA would have more control over her career and drive more of a wedge between her and Walter. I don't think MCA had reason to target well, but they didn't have reason to help him either. MCA wasn't known as the octopus for nothing. They were the biggest, most powerful agency anywhere ever and they really could have their way with people. 

Karina: So when Walter sat in his parked car in view of the MCA parking lot on December 13th, he had a pretty good idea of where his wife was, and with whom. Armed with the report from the detective, he could have visualized seeking revenge or as he may have thought of it, enacting justice. 

Vanessa: The Los Angeles police department had named Walter a civilian deputy and given him a gun. That was the gun he used to threaten Jennings with and ultimately shoot him in a parking lot in 1951. Exterior, MCA parking lot. Beverly Hills, dusk. Jennings Lang holds the door open to a kelly green Cadillac convertible as Joan Bennett gets into the driver's seat. 

Joan Bennett [Reenactment]: "Thank you for another pleasant afternoon." 

Jennings Lang [Reenactment]: "Let's see if I can't meet you again this time. Next week, here's an excuse, Minnelli is serious about another 'Father of the Bride' film with the same writing team. I think we can put the project together pretty quickly." 

Joan Bennett [Reenactment]: "Well, if Spence and Liz haven't grown sick and tired of me, you know, how much I love them."

Vanessa: Joan's voice trails off as she catches sight of Walter, a dozen feet away walking across the parking lot, heading directly toward them with a gun in his hand. 

Joan Bennett [Reenactment]: "Get away from here. Leave us alone." 

Vanessa: Jennings turns in horror to see Walter's gun pointed right at him. Jennings puts his hands up as if surrendering. 

Jennings Lang [Reenactment]: "Oh don't be silly Walter. Don't be silly." 

Vanessa: Two gunshots. Jennings, slumps to the ground, blood running down his pant leg. Walter drops the gun. With the two men in her life immobile, Joan springs into action. She grabs the gun off the pavement and throws it in the back of her car, glaring at Walter. As we see a parking lot attendant rush over, lift Jennings into the back of the convertible, and start the car to drive Joan and Jennings to the hospital, we hear Joan's' inner monologue. 

Joan Bennett [Reenactment]: "I don't know why, or even how I did it because I've always been extremely gun shy. As I look back, it's a curious thing to me that it was my father who always waved firearms around and threatened people with them, but it was Walter, a controlled and rational human being who'd never threatened anyone who finally brought himself to the extreme of violence. I don't think he meant to do anything but frightened us, perhaps the gun fired involuntarily. I mean, there were bullets remaining in the gun, but I don't know if I'll ever be able to stop the terror of events from reverberating in my mind."

Karina: The Beverly Hills police department is a block away from the parking lot where the shooting took place. So Walter was swiftly apprehended and taken in for questioning. And the detective reports were taken from his car and entered in as evidence. Walter was allowed to have, not just one, but two lawyers join him for questioning. Both of them top entertainment attorneys, Mendel Silberberg and Jerry Geisler. Geisler was particularly notorious. His clients ranged from gangster Bugsy Siegel, to movie star Errol Flynn, who Geisler got acquitted in a high profile statutory rape case. Flanked by this powerful council, Walter confessed.

Walter Wanger [Reenactment]: "I warned Lang in New York in January I would shoot anybody who broke up my home." 

Attorney: "So are you saying you shot Mr. Lang because of his relationship with your wife, Joan Bennett?" 

Walter Wanger [Reenactment]: "Yes. I saw her car in the parking lot, so I waited when they drove up together. I waited for them to go to Mrs. Wanger's car. I said something to Lang, but darned if I know what it was, I was in no mood for listening."

Karina: Joan was questioned too. Joan wouldn't publicly acknowledge having had anything other than a business relationship with Lang until her autobiography published nearly 20 years later. On the night of December 13th, 1951, Joan did what Hollywood stars had been trained to do for nearly 30 years, deny, deflect, and defer to one's press agent. As soon as Jennings was admitted at the hospital, Joan called Maggie Ettinger, her close friend and publicist. Maggie was with Joan when the Beverly Hills chief of police showed up to escort her to the police station for questioning, but the publicist was not allowed inside the interrogation room. There's an old joke about Hollywood that press agents like Ettinger were really set press agents, meaning it was their job to keep their clients out of the press. But that December night, Beverly Hills police would make sure Maggie Ettinger wasn't allowed to perform suppression services for Joan Bennett. Joan was told she was a material witness and was subjected to an examination that she described as rude and tough. Whatever the chief expected, a teary confession, an outburst of anger, Joan failed to take the bait. Ever the consummate professional and repressed 1950s woman, she refused to lose control even if she was boiling inside. Then the chief tried to use her veneer of calm against her. 

Chief of Police: "You're pretty cool about all this aren't ya?" 

Joan Bennett [Reenactment]: "Go right ahead. Barbeque me on both sides. If you think I'm going to break into hysterics for your benefit, you're very much mistaken."

Karina: The chief then told Joan she needed to talk to the district attorney before they would let her go home. Instead of bringing the DA to Joan, the chief took Joan to him. 

Joan Bennett [Reenactment]: "The police chief led me directly into the jaws of the press. He there by gathered no little publicity for himself." 

Karina: When Joan was finally released from custody, she went home with Maggie Ettinger. At Maggie's house, a supportive crew formed, including Joan's, ex-husband Gene Markey and gossip queen Louella Parsons, who wrote about Joan sympathetically in the days and weeks to come. Louella was an exception, for the most part the media feeding frenzy that surrounded the shooting and its aftermath damaged Joan and her daughters a lot more than the man who had actually shot the gun. Or the man who was shot. The morning after the shooting, Joan got up at dawn to collect the newspaper before her daughters could see it. It was good that she did given that the cover of the usually conservative Los Angeles Times that morning was quite lurid and their mom was singled out for her role in the events of the previous night in a headline printed in the size of font usually only seen for the outbreak of a war. "Joan Bennett sees mate shoot agent." So right from the beginning of the three adults in this triangle, which erupted at a time when the idea of naming names was fraught with life or death consequences, only Joan Bennett's name was named by the local paper of record. That there was a triangle was emphasized by the triangular placement of three photos above the fold. A vertical shot of a purse lipped Joan leaving the police station, a small inset of Walter with attorney Jerry Geisler, and most shockingly a shot of an unconscious Jennings Lang splayed out on the operating table. As Rocky Lang recalls, 

Rocky Lang: My dad was taken to Midway Hospital and it became a big deal, and you know, his wife was pulled out of a restaurant and she came and there are shots of him on the gurney with the bloody blankets and him in the hospital and you know, it's pretty gnarly. He got shot in a, in an artery so he had a tremendous amount of blood loss and it and what I was told that, you know, if it had been any, any different, uh, you know, he could have died of blood loss and gone into shock, but he didn't. So he survived. 

Jay Kanter: It was very newsworthy.

Vanessa: This is Jay Kanter. 

Jay Kanter: And I think because a gun was used, it became fairly well-known where other romances around town usually were kept very quiet. 

Matthew Bernstein: You know, Walter shooting Jennings Lang in a parking lot in broad daylight and then turning himself in was just not the way these kinds of things would be handled in Hollywood.

Vanessa: This is Matthew Bernstein. 

Matthew Bernstein: I mean, Hollywood was full of adulterous affairs, but they were, they were kept quiet. They might be open secrets, but people maintained appearances of propriety unless they couldn't.

Karina: There hadn't been a scandal quite like this in Hollywood since the silent era when portly comedian Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle was tried three times and acquitted of manslaughter after he had been accused of allegedly assaulting a starlet at a party in a San Francisco hotel room. In the wake of several incidents in the twenties involving stars, sex, and death, Hollywood instituted a system of self censorship and self policing through which the media worked with the studios to keep a lot of bad behavior quiet. There had been scandals in the thirties and forties, but this scandal was different because it combined both sex and potentially murderous violence. And it exploded so quickly reaching the media before any powerful representatives could step in and control the narrative. It didn't help that Joan's agent was part of the scandal and was recuperating from surgery when Joan needed help the most. As she had so many times before and now became incumbent on Joan to take back control of a situation in order to protect her family.

Joan did her best, but this situation would prove to be much more challenging than anything she had experienced before. Joan made her first statements on the shooting mere hours after it happened to Louella Parsons. Louella had been around forever, and as far back as the scandals of the 1920s, like the Arbuckle trials, she had been a cheerleader for the industry using her column to sacrifice the occasional lamb in order to protect the industry as a whole. This agenda of Louella's comes through loud and clear in her first column about the shooting, in which she positioned Joan as an upstanding member of Hollywood society, who was shocked. Shocked at her husband's lack of impulse control. 

Joan Bennett [Reenactment]: "To think that I should be the one to bring all this terrible publicity on Hollywood. Walter's jealousy of Jennings Lang is so absurd. It borders on temporary derangement. Nobody knows better than you Louella the necessity of my having to work now to support my children." 

Karina: Joan's next attempt to control the narrative came the day after the shooting when she convened a press event in her bedroom at the Holmby Hill's house. Before a crowd of newspaper reporters and TV cameraman, she read a prepared statement.

Joan Bennett [Reenactment]: "I hope that Walter will not be blamed too much. He has been very unhappy and upset for many months because of money worries, and because of his present bankruptcy proceedings, which threatened to wipe out every penny he ever made during his long and successful career as a producer. We have lived together in my Holmby Hills home for some 11 years with our children who love Walter dearly. I feel confident that Walter would never have given voice to the suspicions expressed by him in the newspapers were it not for the fact that he has been so mentally upset with the complexities of the financial burden he has been carrying for such a long time. Knowing Hollywood, as I do, knowing how good, wholesome, and sincere by far and away a majority of motion picture people are, I want to express my deep regret that this incident will add to the opinions entertained by so many." 

Karina: This statement was vetted by Joan's, newly hired lawyer, Grant Cooper, but here Joan made a couple of unforced errors that would color how her relationship with Walter was depicted in the press going forward. She referred to our children, but otherwise the statement made it seem like the children were the only things they shared. She referred to his bankruptcy proceedings and my Holmby Hills home, as though her husband were a border there. Remember this was 1951 a time when extremely traditional ideas about gender roles were in vogue. In that climate, you can imagine men in Hollywood, and all over the country reading this in the morning, paper and sympathizing with how small Walter must have felt trying to scrape together pennies to pay his debts while living in a massive home that his wife thought of as hers. And you can start to understand how in the press coverage going forward it would be Joan who would come to look like the villain and Walter, the gun toting hero. 

Vanessa: Newspapers ran stories about Joan being an adulterous woman and illustrated them with images from her role in "The Macomber Affair," where she's a particularly mean emasculating woman, having an affair with Gregory Peck. Walter did not receive the same treatment in the press. He was spoken about in ways suggesting that he was wronged and that he was a great movie maker and that he'd get through it. If you were conservative as Hedda Hopper was you heap it on Joan. So she really had some interesting words like Wanger spent a fortune on making Joan a star. Then he lost his money, now he's lost his home. So it's all about him and giving him credit for everything about Joan as if Joan is nothing without Walter and had nothing of note on her own.

Karina: Joan was at a disadvantage because she was not under contract to any studio, so she didn't have built in institutional protection. Fortunately Jennings Lang's recovery came within a few days. He made a statement that must place him amongst history as most forgiving victims. 

Jennings Lang [Reenactment]: "I'm bewildered by the unfortunate and unprovoked event that has occurred. I've represented Ms. Bennett for many years as her agent and can only state that Walter Wanger misconstrued what was solely a business relationship. Since there are families and children concerned, I hope this whole regrettable incident can be forgotten as quickly as possible." 

Karina: Jennings would decline to press charges against Walter. It was up to the district attorney to decide where to go from there. The night of the shooting, Walter was booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to commit murder. A charge that carried a prison sentence of up to 14 years. He spent one night in jail and then was freed on bond.

Vanessa: Harold Mirisch, who was one of Walter's bosses at Monogram posted his $5,000 bail, and Walter's life returned to something like normal in the months between the shooting and his prison sentence. He continued to be welcomed to dinner at the Bogarts' house, he attended screenings. Someone sent him a sharp shooters metal, and he joked about where he had hit Jennings. He definitely embraced the raw romantic glory of you catch the man screwing your wife and you shoot his balls off. 

Karina: After spending Christmas with his family, Walter moved out to stay with actress, Jane Greer and her husband. Every morning he'd read headlines about himself with glee. He pulled the trigger and now he was back from the dead. Many of Walter's friends were shocked by what he had done. It seemed totally inconsistent with his personality. He was almost giddy about his accomplishment. Greer remembered that on the day Walter arrived at her house, all he wanted to talk about was where the bullet had landed. 

Walter Wanger [Reenactment]: "Listen, tell me the truth. Where did I hit him? No one will tell me, did I hit what I was aiming for?"

Karina: In January 1952, Wanger pled not guilty by reason of temporary insanity to the charge of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to commit murder. He had fired the gun he said, 'in a bluish flash through a violet haze,' but over the next few months before the trial could begin, Wanger's high powered lawyer, Jerry Geisler, persuaded him to waive his right to a jury trial and plead guilty to the lesser charge of assault with a deadly weapon. The judge reduced the charges against Walter and sentenced him to four months at what was called an honor farm. Essentially a minimum security prison at which most inmates were given agricultural labor jobs. Four months would have been a light sentence for a man initially suspected of having intended to murder his victim, but it was a remarkably harsh punishment for a man who had once been one of the most powerful in movies. And for a Geisler client, the fact that there was any jail time at all was the equivalent of a harsh abuse. Still judge Harry J Board was almost apologetic in handing down his sentence saying he understood that there was quote, 'some great provocation for the shooting caused by a rumor and gossip,' but added 'the court's hands are tied.' Provocation is not a defense. 

Vanessa: Joan wasn't in the courtroom when Walter was sentenced. When a reporter asked her how she felt about the judge's statement, that her husband had great provocation for shooting Lang, she said, 'my opinion is immaterial.' I found that sad, but the reality was that culturally and in the story of her life, her opinion in a way was immaterial because you could argue that the whole feud was between the men and it was as if Joan didn't exist. Both in the act of the shooting and after the fact. They certainly weren't thinking about her. 

Karina: Walter, for his part, accepted his fate with grace. In future letters from lockup Walter referred to himself as a guest of the USA. He joked that he was on location and that the honor farm was just like Palm Springs, but with no agents. That last line was like something out of a Billy Wilder film. Of course, Walter was a guest of the USA because of a situation that ended up depicted in a Billy Wilder film. Joan Bennett and Walter Wanger's film noir lives were now dancing close to farce. At least, if you believed Walter's bubbly postcards from prison. But as we'll see in our next episode, the worst moments at the honor farm filled Walter with both resolve and inspiration, which would become key in the subsequent years during the final act of his career. Even though he spent time behind bars, there was a sense that Walter was sort of liberated by the shooting. 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. 

Vanessa: Why does the world work this way? But I think the act of taking revenge as it was seen, man to man standing up for himself and his woman and his marriage and his children empowered Walter and improved his career in his standing among his peers who all bailed him out and helped him in ways that would never happen for Joan.

Karina: The truth is both Jennings Lang's and Walter Wanger's reputations may have been enhanced by the shooting in a way that Joan Bennett's definitely was not. 

Rocky Lang: I think that Joan suffered for it in many ways more than my father suffered for it.

Vanessa: This is Rocky Lang. 

Rocky Lang: Because she was a movie star and she had an answer to that. This is on the front page of the LA Times and all over the place, and it's a tough recovery because people were always looking to Hollywood to show how corrupt they were. Morally corrupt bankrupt and all of that, so this was a type of story that um, in any other part of life, basically, if it was the plumber, the electrician or whatnot, it has, is it happening that went on, you know, fairly frequently in society, but because it was Hollywood, it became a big deal. And there had to, people had to answer to it. Um, fortunately my father, uh, was protected by Lew Wasserman and he continued to work and he continued to have a great career. 

Karina: The shooting and the need for intense damage control put an end to any kind of relationship between Joan and Jennings, personal or professional.

Rocky Lang: Certainly nothing ever happened you know, after that, I mean, that was over with and done. And shortly thereafter, my dad's wife died. When I said that that Joan suffered more than my father suffered, I mean that my dad's career really didn't change very much. He didn't lose clients, he went on... 

Karina: And so did Walter. Next time on Love is a Crime, we'll talk about how Walter Wanger used his time in prison as a launching pad for a comeback peaking with an Oscar winning movie inspired in part by his experience with the justice system. Then we'll watch as Wanger pours all of this newly acquired power into one of the most fascinating most disastrous movie productions of all time. The Elizabeth Taylor starring "Cleopatra."

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, Griffin Dunne as Jennings Lang, and Brian Comstock as the police chief. 

Vanessa: Our executive producer is Chris Corcoran and our show runner is Jacquelyn Jamjoom. Production support provided by Nico Steele, Julia Doyle, Tony Mantia and Lindsay D Shoenholtz. Location sound by Caleb A. Mose, Hope Paul and Alaric S Campbell. Theme music by Lionel Cohen and Vybbes. 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 Bennet 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 also includes interviews with Matthew Bernstein, Rocky Lang and Jay Kanter. Fact checking by Laura Bullard.