The Silver Screen Oasis

Sad to report that actress Lizabeth Scott has passed away on January 31 at Cedars Sinai Hospital from congestive heart failure according to her longtime friend, Mary Goodstein.

From The Guardian:

In the mid-1940s, Paramount described their latest star signing, Lizabeth Scott, as “beautiful, blonde, aloof and alluring” and, in anticipation of her becoming another tough-girl siren of the period, nicknamed her The Threat. However, during her 12-year film career, the critics and public never saw her as a threat to the two other noirish dames she most resembled, Lauren Bacall and Veronica Lake, although they rarely played duplicitous dames, as Scott did. Only later, some years after her career was in tatters, was she appreciated for being her own woman.

Scott was strong and sultry, her heavy dark eyebrows contrasting with her blonde hair. Like Bacall, she had a low and husky voice, but she was far harder; in fact, she was able to suggest hidden depths of depravity – the ideal femme fatale of the 1940s. As Burt Lancaster says to her in I Walk Alone (1948), “What a fall guy I am – thinking just because you’re good to look at, you’d be good all the way through!”

She was born Emma Matzo, the daughter of John Matzo and his wife Mary (nee Pennock) in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Despite her parents’ opposition to an acting career, she went to the Alvienne School of Drama in New York. She got her first professional engagement with the touring company of Hellzapoppin, where she had little to do but appear in stunning gowns in a series of comedy blackouts.

For the entire Guardian story, go here: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/fe ... beth-scott

Here's a link to her obituary in the LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries ... story.html

Miss Scott was 92.

Very sad news. One of the last Queen of the Noirs - thankfully Coleen Gray is still with us. She was very generous with her fans and thanks to Alan Rode who got me in contact with her when I was seeking info on her early career, she responded both in answering my questions and providing me with a personally-inscribed 40s glamor shot.

Heckuva resume.

RIP Sweet Lizabeth.

More sad news, Stewart Stern, the screenwriter of "Rebel Without a Cause", has passed away at
92:

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries ... story.html

Oh boy... Reading about this on a Friday night was tough:

Theresa, I know there were so many people who were hoping she might visit us at the TCM Film Festival. You posted a lovely photo of Miss Scott.

Thank you Christy. << Sigh! >> I know. What can you do. This is part of Life. RIP LIZABETH SCOTT.

Kingrat and Others,

I was surprised to see not a single book on Lizabeth Scott in existence and it's a sad thing to know that. I was surprised to see that and I tried to search the internet about it and everything came up short.

kingrat wrote:Maven, I love that picture of Lizabeth Scott. I do wish that she had written an autobiography, attended the TCM Film Festival, and fully understood just how much many of us love her work...

I tried to find a pix I hadn't seen posted amongst all the tributes I read about Lizabeth Scott. I can't tell you how ev'ry time I planned on going to the TCMFF, I had the thought hope...dream of seeing her name amongst the featured guests. And yes, that was including THIS year. You know how they spring the schedule on us so very late. I gladly give this idea to TCM ( not that they haven't thought this before. ) If a celebrity won't come to the festival, it'd be great if Robert Osborne and Ben Mankiewicz would film an intro with a celebrity at their home and screen it for us fans. We'd STILL be most grateful. RIP LIZABETH!

Are any of you familiar with the English actor Richard Pasco? He passed away in November 2014 after a long life. Although Mr. Pasco did not do much film work, he has lots of English TV credits and acted frequently on stage. A number of years ago I was fortunate enough to see him as Richard II, a superbly theatrical performance. Although it was summer, there was a good bit of coughing in the audience. Pasco spoke Richard's great line, "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me," turned to the audience, coughed, and went on with his speech. Priceless.

I don't know Richard Pasco. But for him to have the wherewithal to do that coughing bit to the audience is brilliant!

Louis Jourdan, a French actor whose pensive manner and sleekly Cocteauesque dark looks helped to make him successful in both English and his native tongue, has died at age 93. From his first appearance in American films as the taciturn, sullen, darkly obsessed valet of a blind man in Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947), he managed to evoke something mysterious and self-aware, marking his work distinctive from other transatlantic French actors such as Charles Boyer and Maurice Chevalier. I thought he created particularly memorable, subtly complex figures in genres that rarely contain such portraits--A Letter from an Unknown Woman, Madame Bovary, Gigi, and the little known Bird of Paradise--though his delightful turns in lighter fare such as The Happy Time as well as guilty pleasures such as The Best of Everything, Octopussy, Dracula and Swamp Thing also were highly entertaining. M. Jourdan was awarded the Légion d'Honneur by France in July 2010.

A full appreciation of his life appears below in Variety's obituary:
http://variety.com/2015/film/news/louis ... 201434557/

Movita Castenada, who co-starred with Clark Gable when she only 14, and became Marlon Brando's wife and mother of two of his children, has died at age 98. Her full obituary can be seen at the link below:


http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries ... story.html

So sorry about Lesley Gore!

As I kid I loved her guest appearance on Batman, as one of Catwoman's henchwomen -- with a crush on Robin:

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We'll be hearing her on the radio for a long time. That's quite a testament.

A childood icon and darn fine actor/director has left us on his final voyage. God bless him, he left a warning for all cigarette smokers - or those intending to take up the habit.

RIP Leonard Nimoy.


http://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/leo ... -1.2256676

http://www.winnipegsun.com/2014/02/06/l ... ng-disease