Film Noir Fans Shed A Tear-1940s Femme Fatale Actress Lizabeth Scott Passes On At 92....

“I didn’t want any part of her, but I kept smelling that jasmine in her hair, and I wanted her in my arms. Yeah. I knew I was walking into something.” Bogie in Dead Reckoning

From The American Left History blog-July 27, 2012

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Jane Greer Move Over-Lizabeth Scott’s “Too Late For Tears”

DVD Review

Too Late For Tears, starring Lizabeth Scott, Dan Duryea, United Artists, 1949
Too late for tears is right, probably too late at about age six for our shoot-‘em-up femme fatale Jane (played her is demonic fashion by usually demure, if always husky-voiced, Lizabeth Scott). They, those tears, got all dried up and shriveled as she furtively pushed her way forward in this wicked old world. And every man in sight had better watch out, and not turn his back. Jane Greer from Out Of The Past had better move over because there is a new sheriff (actually anti-sheriff) who is not to afraid put a slug, or six, in a guy who will not do her bidding, or even think about not doing it. There are two kinds of femme fatales in this wicked old world, those with hearts of gold and those with no hearts. Dear Jan e fits the later in surprising interesting B crime noir under review, Too Late For Tears

Yes, some of the dialogue is a little stiff and the copy I reviewed had some technical glitches in it but this one nevertheless held my attention. Partially because cinematically anyway it is easy to “fall” for a heartless femme, especially when she gets those wheels in her head turning madly for whatever is it is she is after (and gets those guns blaring too). Partially as well because the theme of the film, although greed as a driving force in human history has been done unto death, crime doesn’t pay gets a little different workout here as the plot develops and is resolved.

Divorcee Jane (prior husband committed suicide, prompted or not, by his business failures and therefore no dough status made him bum of the month is dear Jane’s eyes) is married to a regular middle class guy, Alan, (with nice digs in Hollywood, 1940s Hollywood) who she had latched onto to make her fame and fortune (mainly the latter). While convertible cruising the Hollywood hills a passing car dumps a parcel in the backseat (good aim) of their car. Turned out there was some serious dough (serious 1940s dough now strictly coffee and cakes money) stashed there as part of a blackmail payoff. Naturally the money hunger wheels start working in Jane’s head (although not in Alan’s for which he would pay dearly, very dearly). She taunts Alan into keeping it at the bus station for a while, although against his better judgment.

Enter the “owner” of the dough Danny (played by Dan Duryea) who wants it back (naturally). The rest of the plot centers on Jane playing off every man who gets in her way, starting with kindred spirit Danny, as she tries to “con” a con. Hubby Alan is the first by a few off-hand point blank shots from his own gun when he decides to turn the dough in. Later, after hubby’s demise, when Danny now knee –deep as an accomplice to Jane’s madness gets cold feet at murder (murder of a woman in this case, Alan’s sister, who is getting suspicious about missing Alan’s whereabouts) he takes the fall, this time with some untimely poison administered by guess who. And eventually trouper that she is, Jan is getting ready to plug a guy who turned out to be her ex-husband’s brother who is seeking revenge (possibly) for his brother’s death before her own untimely death. Whoa! So guys if some husky-voiced dame, a blonde probably, wants to keep some off-hand dough, let her keep it, and for god’s sake don’t turn your back.

*************

Lizabeth Scott, Film Noir Siren, Dies at 92

By ROBERT D. McFADDENFEB. 6, 2015

Inside

Photo

Ms. Scott with Van Heflin in “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers” (1946), one of her first films. Credit Paramount Pictures, via Photofest

Lizabeth Scott, a sultry blonde with a come-hither voice cut out for the seething romantic and homicidal passions of her Hollywood film noir roles in the late 1940s and early ’50s, died on Jan. 31 in Los Angeles. She was 92.

 

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center confirmed the death, but did not give a cause.

Ms. Scott was billed as another Lauren Bacall or Veronica Lake, and in many of her 22 films she portrayed a good-bad girl with love in her head and larceny in her heart, or vice versa. Her co-stars were Humphrey Bogart, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster and other tough gents, and her movies’ titles were lurid stuff: “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers,” “Dead Reckoning,” “Pitfall,” “Dark City,” “I Walk Alone” and “Bad for Each Other.”

"When you say ambition to me, that’s when you get me started!" Ms. Scott was widely quoted as saying. "My greatest ambition is to be the whoppingest best actress in Hollywood. You can’t blame a girl for trying! I don’t want to be classed as a ‘personality,’ something to stare at. I want to have my talents respected, not only by the public but by myself."

Photo

Lizabeth Scott in 2007, at a Barbara Stanwyck tribute. Credit Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

She had the goods: the luminous eyes and moist lips that belied a heart of stone, the slinky figure, the sculptured cheekbones, the cascading hair and husky voice suitable for torch songs or seductive close-ups. She gave a riveting performance as a killer in “Too Late for Tears” in 1949 and was captivating as Charlton Heston’s singer girlfriend in the revenge thriller “Dark City” in 1950.

By then postwar film noir was losing its appeal, and her last foray into the genre was in “The Racket” (1951), with Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan. Later in the ’50s she drifted into mediocre melodramas and even a western.

Ms. Scott’s heyday lasted barely a decade, and film historians say it never matched the Bacall magic or the Lake sensuality. Her later performances were scorned by many critics, though some said she was thoroughly convincing in unsympathetic roles.

Her film career was further damaged, perhaps fatally, by an innuendo-laced 1954 article in Confidential magazine suggesting that she was a lesbian. The article noted that she had never married, quoted her as saying that she “always wore male colognes, slept in men’s pajamas and positively hated frilly feminine dresses,” and said that she had been “taking up almost exclusively with Hollywood’s weird society of baritone babes.”

Ms. Scott sued for $2.5 million, contending that the magazine had portrayed her in a “vicious, slanderous and indecent” manner. The outcome was never made public, but the suit, filed in 1955, was believed to have been settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. The scandal, however, was nearly ruinous. She made two more unremarkable films in the 1950s, then turned to singing, recording for RCA Records.

There were also television appearances, on game shows and occasionally on drama series including “Studio 57,” “The 20th Century Fox Hour,” “Adventures in Paradise” and “The Third Man.” She performed on radio shows like “The Lux Radio Theater,” and even did television voice-overs for juice and cat-food commercials. She appeared in her last film, “Pulp,” with Michael Caine and Mickey Rooney, in 1972.

Continue reading the main story

Continue reading the main story

In her later years, Ms. Scott led a quiet, largely private life. She helped raise funds for museums, art galleries and charities, including hemophilia research and hunger, and turned down many requests for interviews and guest appearances. There were rumors in the 1960s that she might marry Hal B. Wallis, the producer who discovered her, but she remained single.

The film historian Karen Burroughs Hannsberry, in “Femme Noir: Bad Girls of Film” (1998), called Ms. Scott “a unique product of Hollywood’s Golden Age” and “one of film noir’s archetypal femmes.”

She was born Emma Matzo on Sept. 29, 1922, in Scranton, Pa., one of six children of Ukrainian immigrants. She attended Marywood College, but quit to move to New York City. She enrolled at the Alvienne School of Drama, got work in summer stock and modeling and started calling herself Elizabeth Scott. Information on survivors was not immediately available.

In 1942, Ms. Scott was the understudy for Tallulah Bankhead in the Broadway production of Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth” but had no chance to substitute. When Miriam Hopkins replaced Bankhead in 1943, Ms. Scott returned to modeling. But she was called back to the show to fill in for an ailing Gladys George, who had replaced Hopkins. She won rave reviews, and played the lead in the play’s Boston run.

Mr. Wallis noticed her. Screen tests and a Paramount contract followed. She had already dropped the “E” in her first name — “to be different,” she said. She made her film debut in “You Came Along” (1945), then was cast in “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers” (1946), with Barbara Stanwyck and Kirk Douglas. Her scenes were limited, but reviewers praised her performance.

Her breakthrough was “Dead Reckoning” (1947), opposite Bogart. In her ensuing mystery-thrillers — “I Walk Alone” and “Pitfall” in 1948, “Too Late for Tears” in 1949, “Paid in Full” in 1950 — she joined the classic pantheon of film noir: beautiful schemers caught in maelstroms of jealousy, greed, betrayal and murder, but irresistible.

Bogart, in “Dead Reckoning,” put it this way:

“I didn’t want any part of her, but I kept smelling that jasmine in her hair, and I wanted her in my arms. Yeah. I knew I was walking into something.”