--- name: "Lizabeth Scott" canonical: "https://film.one/person/lizabeth-scott" roles: ["Actor"] born: "29 September 1922" died: "31 January 2015" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 average_as: "actor" average_over: 1 updated: "2026-09-19T21:24:11.833417+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Lizabeth Scott Actor. Born 29 September 1922 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA. Died 31 January 2015. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 29 September 1922, Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA - **Died:** 31 January 2015 - **Also known as:** Emma Matzo, Lizabeth Virginia Scott - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizabeth_Scott, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q264011, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0779507/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/83796 ## Fi1m on Lizabeth Scott > Lizabeth Scott spent a decade in noir being the woman across the desk: a low, worn voice, a face that gives almost nothing away. Some found that mysterious and some found it wooden. On the evidence we have, both were right on different days. In *The Racket* (1951) Lizabeth Scott gets one scene that matters, and it is the scene to judge her by. Irene Hayes sits across a precinct-house desk from McQuigg, and for four or five minutes the writing is quick and hard and she meets it line for line in that low, worn voice. She does not lean in. The other person does the moving. Then the film gives her a nightclub number and remembers her only when it needs a witness. We sat up for those four minutes and were sorry when they ended, and the picture around them never quite got us back. That is the pattern of most of her decade. Hal B. Wallis found her on the stage, signed her to Paramount and put her in *You Came Along* (1945). *The Strange Love of Martha Ivers* (1946), with Barbara Stanwyck and Kirk Douglas, got her noticed; *Dead Reckoning* (1947), opposite Humphrey Bogart, fixed the part she would play for years, the woman whose account of herself cannot be trusted. *Pitfall* (1948) let her be the vulnerable one for once, and *Too Late for Tears* (1949) put a scheming, ambitious woman at the centre of the film and let her run it, which is why it is the title most often mentioned first. She made around 22 films by 1957, eight of them for Wallis and two for John Cromwell, *The Racket* among them. After that she more or less stopped, with a single return in *Pulp* (1972), a film that pays its respects to the genre she had worked in. What she had was the voice, husky and worn, which the studios used by making her a nightclub singer whenever they could, and a face, blonde under dark eyebrows, that gave almost nothing away. Contemporary critics did not always take the second as a gift. She was compared to Lauren Bacall from the start, usually to her disadvantage, and in *I Walk Alone* (1948) and *Dark City* (1950) she was called wooden. We can see how. The stillness is a choice, but on a flat-lit set it can look like she has simply not been told what to do. It needs a photographer like George E. Diskant, who in *The Racket* brings faces out of the dark and sends them back, so that a woman doing nothing with her face is what the frame wants. Given that light, she is as good as anyone in the picture. Denied it, she can seem to be waiting for direction. She said late in life: "I loved making films. There was something about that lens that I adored, and it adored me back." On the evidence of *The Racket* that is true for about four minutes at a time. Start there, with the interrogation, and then go to *Too Late for Tears*, where the part is hers and nobody sets her aside. ## Biography Lizabeth Scott was an American actress. Born Emma Matzo on 29 September 1922 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, she trained at the Alvienne School of the Theatre in New York City. She understudied the role of Sabina in the original Broadway production of The Skin of Our Teeth before making her screen debut in the mid-1940s. Scott appeared in 22 feature films between 1945 and 1972, most of them in the film noir genre. She played leading roles in titles including *The Strange Love of Martha Ivers* (1946), *Dead Reckoning* (1947), *Pitfall* (1948), *Too Late for Tears* (1949), *Dark City* (1950) and *The Racket* (1951) as Irene Hayes. She also worked in stage productions, radio and television. Her final film role was in *Pulp* (1972). Scott died on 31 January 2015 in Los Angeles. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, tvinsider.com.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *The Racket* (1951), Fi1m 60, as Irene Hayes — [page](https://film.one/film/the-racket.md) ## Complete filmography (27) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *Pulp* (1972), as Princess Betty Cippola - *Burke's Law* (1963), series, as Mona Roberts - *Adventures in Paradise* (1959), series, as Carla MacKinley - *The Third Man* (1959), series, as Diana Masters - *Loving You* (1957), as Glenda Markle - *The Weapon* (1956), as Elsa Jenner - *The 20th Century Fox Hour* (1955), series, Actor - *Silver Lode* (1954), as Rose Evans - *Bad for Each Other* (1953), as Helen Curtis - *Scared Stiff* (1953), as Mary Carroll - *Stolen Face* (1952), as Alice Brent / Lily Conover - *The Racket* (1951), as Irene Hayes — Fi1m 60, [page](https://film.one/film/the-racket.md) - *Red Mountain* (1951), as Chris - *Two of a Kind* (1951), as Brandy Kirby - *The Company She Keeps* (1951), as Joan - *Dark City* (1950), as Fran Garland - *Lux Video Theatre* (1950), series, as Margaret Bailey, Betsy - *Paid in Full* (1950), as Jane Langley - *Easy Living* (1949), as Liza Wilson - *Too Late for Tears* (1949), as Jane Palmer - *Pitfall* (1948), as Mona Stevens - *I Walk Alone* (1947), as Kay Lawrence - *Variety Girl* (1947), as Lizabeth Scott - *Desert Fury* (1947), as Paula Haller - *Dead Reckoning* (1946), as Coral Chandler - *The Strange Love of Martha Ivers* (1946), as Antonia 'Toni' Marachek - *You Came Along* (1945), as Ivy Hotchkiss ## Gallery - ![Lizabeth Scott](https://film.one/media/person/1224106/gallery-85f2092e691c.jpg) Lizabeth Scott — Robert Coburn, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Lizabeth_Scott-publicity.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![American actress Lizabeth Scott (1945)](https://film.one/media/person/1224106/gallery-1920a11e5809.jpg) American actress Lizabeth Scott (1945) — Whitey Schafer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Lizabeth_Scott_by_A._L._Whitey_Schafer.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![Publicity still of Lizabeth Scott in the 1946 film "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" Other information Film listed in Wiki article on films in public domain](https://film.one/media/person/1224106/gallery-e07552f38311.jpg) Publicity still of Lizabeth Scott in the 1946 film "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" Other information Film listed in Wiki article on films in public domain — Paramount, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/Publicity_still_for_%22The_Strange_Love_of_Martha_Ivers%22_%281946%29.jpg/1280px-Publicity_still_for_%22The_Strange_Love_of_Martha_Ivers%22_%281946%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Dead Reckoning press photo featuring Lizabeth Scott and Humphrey Bogart. (1946)](https://film.one/media/person/1224106/gallery-d201662e3682.jpg) Dead Reckoning press photo featuring Lizabeth Scott and Humphrey Bogart. (1946) — Coburn / Columbia Pictures, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Lizabeth_Scott_and_Humphrey_Bogart_%28Dead_Reckoning_press_photo%29.jpg/1280px-Lizabeth_Scott_and_Humphrey_Bogart_%28Dead_Reckoning_press_photo%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Lizabeth Scott](https://film.one/media/person/1224106/gallery-7856acc2a41d.jpg) Lizabeth Scott — Image via TMDB - ![Lizabeth Scott](https://film.one/media/person/1224106/gallery-0eb8ba52a32d.jpg) Lizabeth Scott — Image via TMDB - ![Lizabeth Scott](https://film.one/media/person/1224106/gallery-e8169fbbd75b.jpg) Lizabeth Scott — Image via TMDB - ![Humphrey Bogart and Lizabeth Scott in Dead Reckoning press photo. (1947)](https://film.one/media/person/1224106/gallery-ea32d3cda7b9.jpg) Humphrey Bogart and Lizabeth Scott in Dead Reckoning press photo. (1947) — Joe Walters, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/Dead_Reckoning_press_photo_by_Joe_Walters_%281947%29.jpg/1280px-Dead_Reckoning_press_photo_by_Joe_Walters_%281947%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Publicity photo of American actress Lizabeth Scott in Stolen Face (1952)](https://film.one/media/person/1224106/gallery-572a4a3c86ee.jpg) Publicity photo of American actress Lizabeth Scott in Stolen Face (1952) — Hammer Films, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a8/Lizabeth_Scott_in_Stolen_Face_%281952%29.jpg/1280px-Lizabeth_Scott_in_Stolen_Face_%281952%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Lizabeth Scott](https://film.one/media/person/1224106/gallery-e81fd11b4855.jpg) Lizabeth Scott — Image via TMDB - ![Lizabeth Scott](https://film.one/media/person/1224106/gallery-a1196740c55e.jpg) Lizabeth Scott — Image via TMDB - ![Lizabeth Scott](https://film.one/media/person/1224106/gallery-d630d8cbbaec.jpg) Lizabeth Scott — Image via TMDB --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/lizabeth-scott