Lizabeth Scott

Lizabeth Scott was an actress best known for femme fatale roles in several film noir dramas of the 1940s and ’50s.

Born Emma Matzo in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1922, she studied drama at the Alvienne School in New York — where she adopted the name Elizabeth Scott, eventually dropping the E in her first name — and worked as a fashion model before embarking on an acting career.

She got an early break when she was cast as Tallulah Bankhead's understudy in the 1942 Broadway production of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth. Although she did not get an opportunity to spell Bankhead, who did not miss a performance, Scott eventually caught the attention of producer Hal Wallis and other Hollywood figures, which led to a contract with Paramount Pictures.

Scott made her film debut in the 1945 release You Came Along, starring Bob Cummings. The following year she had a significant role in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, with Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin and Kirk Douglas. Over the following decade she appeared in numerous other films, a number of them regarded as classics of the noir genre. They included Dead Reckoning, opposite Humphrey Bogart, I Walk Alone, with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, and Pitfall, in which she spells trouble for leading man Dick Powell.

In a departure from her more hard-boiled performances, she showed comedic range in Scared Stiff, starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and she co-starred opposite Elvis Presley in the 1957 music Loving You.

She began appearing on television in the early ’50s, beginning with an episode of the anthology series Lux Video Theatre. Her other TV credits included The Eddie Cantor Comedy Theater, Studio 57, The 20th Century Fox Hour and Burke's Law.

In 1957 she recorded an album titled Lizabeth.

Scott died on January 31, 2015, in Los Angeles. She was 92.