- In 1951 Wanger was convicted of attempted murder in the shooting of talent agent Jennings Lang. Lang was the agent of Joan Bennett, then Wanger's wife, and Wanger discovered the two of them were having an affair. He caught them in the act, and wound up shooting Lang in the groin. Wanger served a four-month sentence in the County Honor Farm at Castaic, 39 miles north of Downtown Los Angeles, then quickly returning to his career to make a series of successful films. His experiences there resulted in his producing the seminal prison film classic Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954).
- The surname Wanger, as pronounced, rhymes with 'stranger'
- Holds a special place in the history of motion picture production - he was the first and last studio executive to suggest to Groucho Marx that he lose the greasepaint moustache as it was an "obvious fake". (Source: Joseph Adamson III in his book "Groucho, Harpo, Chico and sometimes Zeppo" (1973)
- President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1939 to October 1941 and from December 1941 to 1945
- During World War I he was a fighter pilot in the Italian Air Force, and saw combat in France.
- In 1949 he turned down a Special Academy Award given him for Joan of Arc (1948). Wanger was furious at the way the film had been marketed and blamed tycoon Howard Hughes - who at the time owned RKO Studios, the studio that distributed the film - for its commercial failure. He was reportedly also angry that the film's several Oscar nominations did not include one for Best Picture.
- Grandfather of producer Vanessa Wanger, fiancée of independent producer Ted Hope.
- He has produced two films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Stagecoach (1939) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).
- According to Simone Signoret in her autobiography, when she came to the USA in the late fifties, she met Walter Wanger who asked her to support him against the death penalty, especially the Caryl Chessman case. When he asked Signoret why she refused, she told him that she was not that sure of the innocence of Chessman. Then she asked him how he behaved during the Rosenbergs' case, before their execution: Wanger told her that he did nothing.
- Hosted the Academy Awards in 1941
- In a March 1937 movie industry Trade Paper item it was announced that producer Walter Wanger was about to put four feature films into production within the next 60 days. These consisted of "The River is Blue" (eventually released as "Blockade" in 1938), "Vogues of 1938", "Personal History" (to be based on the book "Personal History" by Vincent Sheean, the rights to which Wanger had bought in 1935), and "Fifty-Second Street" (released as "52nd Street"). The proposed filming of "Personal History" was canceled, but Wanger again considered using the book as the basis for his production "Foreign Correspondent" in 1940, but discarded most of it, using other writers.
- After his death, his production company Walter Wanger Productions (as well as its library) was sold to and absorbed by Time-Life Films.
- Father of Stephanie Guest.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content