Lizabeth Scott: Film noir star of the 1940s and 1950s, Elvis Presley leading woman
Lizabeth Scott, a Paramount star in the 1940s usually cast as film noir heroines, died on Jan. 31 in Los Angeles. Scott, born (as Emma Matzo) on Sept. 29, 1922, was 92.
Among the two dozen film featuring Lizabeth Scott – whose hair-style and husky line delivery were clearly inspired by Paramount’s own Veronica Lake, along with Warner Bros.’ Lauren Bacall – were the following:
- John Farrow’s You Came Along (1945), with Robert Cummings.
- Lewis Milestone’s The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), in which she plays that younger, good girl opposite Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, and Kirk Douglas.
- Desert Fury (1947), with Burt Lancaster, John Hodiak, and Wendell Corey, a compelling Technicolor mixture of film noir and melodrama in which Scotts lusts after Burt Lancaster while being lusted after by John Hodiak, who, in turn, is lusted after by Wendell Corey. Making things a tad more complicated, there’s mom Mary Astor for Scott’s character to both deal and compete with.
- Dead Reckoning (1947), in which Humphrey Bogart has trouble figuring out whether she’s inscrutably femme or deceitfully fatale.
- Pitfall (1948), in which she disrupts the life of married man Dick Powell.
- Too Late for Tears (1949), a central character as the vixen who will do whatever it takes to make her dreams come true
- Dark City (1950), with Charlton Heston
- The Racket (1951), with Robert Ryan and Robert Mitchum
- The Company She Keeps (1951), with Jane Greer
- Bad for Each Other (1954), also with Charlton Heston
A couple of uncharacteristic Lizabeth Scott movies:
- Scared Stiff (1953), a remake of the Bob Hope–Paulette Goddard suspense-comedy The Ghost Breakers (1940), costarring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Scott plays the romantic interest.
- The Elvis Presley star vehicle Loving You (1957), also featuring her former Desert Fury costar Wendell Corey.
Confidential magazine
Also of note, Lizabeth Scott was involved in a scandal when Confidential magazine, the 1950s precursor of today’s tabloid rags, published a front-page story in its September 1954 issue. The magazine asserted that Scott was a lesbian whose name was found in “the little black books kept by Hollywood prostitutes.”
Scott sued Confidential, but lost on a technicality.*
Lizabeth Scott never married. Her last big-screen appearance was in the 1972 film noir spoof Pulp, also featuring Michael Caine and Mickey Rooney.
In recent years, she was spotted – older, of course, but as sultry as ever – at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ screening of The Strange Love of Martha Ivers at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
* Back in the more circumspect 1950s, Confidential also alleged that Liberace was gay (“Why Liberace’s Theme Song Should Be ‘Mad About the Boy’”) and claimed that Miracle on 34th Street star Maureen O’Hara had been caught having sex inside a Hollywood movie theater.
Liberace, O’Hara, and Oscar-nominated actress Dorothy Dandridge (“What Dorothy Did in the Woods”), among others, also sued. In some instances, Confidential had to pay damages, and following a much-publicized libel trial was forced to change its tone. Its readership plummeted and the magazine ultimately folded.