Guardian - 21 January 2018, 14:45 (+ 2289 days 16 hours and 32 minutes) Movies & TV
Hollywood star who won an Oscar for her role in Written on the Wind and appeared in the TV soap Peyton PlaceAlthough the Hollywood star Dorothy Malone, who has died aged 93, appeared in only a handful of works of distinction in a fairly lengthy career, they were good enough to secure her place in film history. On those occasions when the role permitted, most notably in two flamboyant melodramas directed by Douglas Sirk, Written on the Wind (1956) and The Tarnished Angels (1957), Malone revealed what a talented performer she could be, one capable of projecting a potent blend of cynicism, sexuality and intelligence. However, she was probably most familiar to the general public as Constance MacKenzie in Peyton Place (1964-68), one of the first primetime TV soap operas.In Written on the Wind, Malone played Marylee, an oil heiress, sister of an alcoholic playboy Kyle Hadley (Robert Stack). She’s in love with Kyle’s best friend Mitch (Rock Hudson), but he’s in love with Kyle’s pregnant wife Lucy (Lauren Bacall). Jealous, Marylee convinces Kyle that Lucy’s baby really belongs to Mitch. Her wild erotic dance to a loud mambo beat, intercut with scenes of her father’s fatal heart attack, is one of the great sequences of 1950s Hollywood melodrama. “It was a miracle that I got her to do the scene,” Sirk recalled. “She was very prudish ... I even had to watch my language. If I said, ‘This scene needs more balls’, she’d walk off the set.” Malone, upstaging even Bacall, won the best supporting actress Oscar. Continue reading...