Triangle in Hollywood

In a Hollywood parking lot one evening last week, a jealous husband waited for his wife to return from, a drive with another man. After the big Cadillac convertible pulled to a stop, the attendant heard the woman pleading and the man's startled voice: "Don't be silly, Walter. Don't!" Then there were two shots. One bullet from the husband's pistol smashed into the Cadillac's tail fin. The other struck the suspected rival in the groin.

Even before the wounded man got to the hospital, the news was on Page One, and even the most cynical Hollywood moviemakers reacted with a cold chill of alarm. This was no Payton-Tone free-for-all, 'or Gardner-Sinatra burlesque. This time the triangle revolved around some of Hollywood's shiniest showpieces. The husband: Dartmouth man Walter Wanger (rhymes with Grainger), 57, noted producer (Stagecoach, Algiers) and former Academy Award president. Walter Wanger had been on the financial skids since his monumental flop, Joan of Arc; after another failure he went into bankruptcy for $175,000. But he was still a man whose name stood for respectability, culture and the intellectual values at the crossroads of Sunset and Vine. The wife: Actress Joan Bennett, 41, beauteous screen grandmother and one of Hollywood's prime exhibits in the campaign to prove that virtue and glamour can be synonymous. Third in the triangle: Actress Bennett's agent, Jennings Lang, 39, oldtime friend of the family, who frequently accompanied his client on business trips around the country.

Full Briefcase. While Hollywood's brass fidgeted with dismay, Wanger did nothing to set matters aright. From a jail cell, he coldly explained that he had long suspected Lang of having more than an agent's interest in his wife. In Manhattan last winter, he said, he had warned Lang: "I'll shoot anyone who tries to break up my home." Last week, with a briefcase full of private detective's reports, he decided the time had come to keep his promise.

Actress Bennett did her best to hush the scandal. "Knowing Hollywood as I do," she declared with conscientious concern, "knowing how good, wholesome and sincere the majority of motion picture people are, I deeply regret that this incident will add to the erroneous opinion of Hollywood shared by so many." There was no romance, she said. Her ride with Agent Lang was a business conference and they had simply used the car to escape the jangling telephones in his office. The sorry affair was simply the result of Wan-ger's business troubles: "I hope that Walter will not be blamed too much. He has been very unhappy and upset for many months because of money worries."

Smash Wind-Up. But the story was too big to stop. Hardly had Actress Bennett finished her appearance as the forgiving wife when Husband Wanger, released on bail, turned up at home, packed up his belongings and moved out to a bachelor's apartment. In the hospital Lang maintained a stony silence, refused to press charges. But the Los Angeles district attorney promptly announced that he would bring the case to trial just the same, and Hollywood shuddered again.

The whole thing, said one worried publicity director, "is just the smash wind-up of Movietime, U.S.A."--the public-relations festival designed, among other things, to convince the country that Hollywood is just like Main Street anywhere.

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