How to Be Attractive by Joan Bennett

Whenever I hear Joan Bennett speak, I hear her throaty voice saying, as she supposedly did when her husband Walter Wanger shot the man he suspected to be her lover: "Oh for CHRIST'S sake Walter, he's ONLY an Agent!"



From HOW TO BE ATTRACTIVE by Joan Bennett (1951)

Some of our ancestors made a virtue of ugliness. I have a sneaking suspicion that it was a few hags who were neglected on the Mayflower boat trip. Today ministers to the spirit, body, and mind all agree that the woman who has stopped trying to be attractive is a sick woman.



Time for Headwork
A beautiful face, figure, and clothes do not necessarily add up to an attractive woman. Rather than delving into history or the world at large, suppose I just quote my own business. Look at the woman movie stars who have had great followings for the last ten or twenty years. Most of them have some claim to beauty--but frequently they have less beauty than other near stars have never made the grade. Now look around at your own friends. Oh, it's personality, is it?

Fastidiousness and vitality are parts of that "quality of the person." That's why much of this book has been devoted to sane and simple care.



How is Your Heart?
I don't remember how I got hold of the yardstick of kindness. Certainly it drops from my hands too frequently. My critics and friends will testify that I'm impatient, quick-tempered, and caustic. I have even been guilty of ugly generalizations. But cruel and unfair as I have been and probably will be, I have lost the knack of effective, damaging cruelty. It didn't disappear by any reasoning process or abstract philosophy. I won't even tell you the actual turning-point. But it was typically woman-fashion. You see, it is easy to love babies...



It is selfishness in the highest degree. I have children of my own. I want their world to be clean and free. If I help rob other children of that world, what possible assurance have I that my own won't live in the hopeless one of discrimination, poverty, sorrow?

I grow a little embarrassed, knowing I am not qualified to discuss these things glibly or as a personification of them. But it had to be mentioned--even in a none too serious book on beauty, by a far from great, gentle or wise woman.



Films: SUSPIRIA (Argento, 1977), SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR (Lang, 1948), SCARLET STREET (Lang, 1945), THE WOMAN ON THE BEACH (Renoir, 1947), THERE'S ALWAYS TOMORROW (Sirk, 1956)