Saturdays with the Stars: Lizabeth Scott

Each month of 2019 we will be looking at the careers of leading ladies of Classical Hollywood who were never nominated for an Academy Award as part of our "Saturdays with the Stars" series.  Last month, our focus was on Linda Darnell, a gorgeous star at Fox who briefly had a supernova moment in her career in the 1940's before alcoholism, depression, and an unspeakable tragedy ended her life at the age of 41.  This month, we'll take a look at an actress whose life was very long (she died just four years ago), but also had some very interesting twists-and-turns, and to go along with our film noir theme for June, we'll be investigating one of the most important actresses of the genre who was a major player for Hal Wallis Productions in the late 1940's/early 1950's, Ms. Lizabeth Scott.

Lizabeth Scott may well be best-remembered today by film historians not for her roles in 22 films (where she appeared as the leading lady in all but one, almost unrivaled in Classical Hollywood where you had to work your way up or ended up working your way down), but for the role she (allegedly) inspired: Eve Harrington.  Though the inspiration for the short story The Wisdom of Eve (which ended up being the source for Best Picture winner All About Eve) is debatable, it is frequently cited that during the stage production of The Skin of Our Teeth, Scott was hired as Tallulah Bankhead's understudy in a way to try to get Bankhead to show up for rehearsals and never miss a performance.  The plan worked, as the 40-year-old Bankhead despised the 20-year-old Scott, and was convinced Scott was having an affair with the play's producer Michael Myerberg (there appears to be some truth to this rumor).  Throughout the production, Bankhead and Scott fought and loathed each other, and Bankhead supposedly gloated when she left the production to Scott, as Scott didn't get to replace her but instead the part went to Miriam Hopkins, and then finally Gladys George, by which point Scott had left the production briefly (replaced by another future film noir superstar, Gloria Grahame) and returned.  It was during George's run in the play that Scott was finally able to play the role of Sabina in the production, and was spotted by Hal Wallis, who eventually signed her to a contract to his production company, which was closely associated with Paramount.  Another legend about Scott states that at this point in her career she dropped the "E" in her first name to just be Lizabeth in an effort to "conserve newsprint during a time of war."

In a move that mirrors Alice Faye/Linda Darnell, Lizabeth Scott became a star in Hollywood thanks to the obsession of one Hollywood producer (Wallis) who wanted to feature her more than the established star of The Strange Love of Martha Ivers Barbara Stanwyck (this is one of the films we'll profile this month, which also has the screen debut of Kirk Douglas).  The trick worked though, as in conjunction with her role opposite Humphrey Bogart in Dead Reckoning the following year, Scott became a proper star, though a typecast one who rarely worked outside of noir (something that frustrated her but she put up with since it paid the bills).

Scott's life offscreen is perhaps more famous during this period than any of the films she made for Wallis.  She read Aldous Huxley, and nearly joined a cult devoted to him, and somehow was friendly with both the Dalai Lama and Ayn Rand; in her spare time she'd take random classes about philosophy at USC.  She apparently had affairs with everyone from James Mason to Peter Lawford to David Mountbatten (the best man at Queen Elizabeth's marriage to Prince Philip)-she was even the "rebound" after Burt Bacharach broke up with Angie Dickinson.  During the mid-1950's, she was the target of a Confidential Magazine article which alleged that she was a lesbian, for which she sued the magazine (this was unsuccessful, but a later, larger suit that involved celebrities like Dorothy Dandridge and Maureen O'Hara was successful and basically made Confidential into a laughingstock).  Largely retired by the mid-1950's, she occasionally came out for films (including the Elvis Presley musical Loving You and the noir comedy Pulp with Michael Caine), and briefly pursued a career in music, but largely disappeared from the limelight, rarely doing interviews (though she was apparently best friends with Michael Jackson for a time).  She died in 2015 from heart failure, decades after her heyday, one of the final film stars of the 1940's to still be alive.  This month we'll look at her short career at the top of Hollywood, investigating her work to see if it can somehow match the fascinating woman behind the camera.