Her daughter Mimi Vanderstraaten confirmed the death, at an assisted living facility, where Ms. Malone had lived for the last 10 years.

Ms. Malone was 31 and had been in Hollywood for 13 years when she was cast as Marylee Hadley, a spoiled, sex-crazed young Texas oil heiress, in "Written on the Wind" (1956). The film, directed by Douglas Sirk, Hollywood's master of glossy melodrama, also starred Rock Hudson and Robert Stack.

The three starred again together two years later in Sirk's drama "Tarnished Angels," in which a reporter (Mr. Hudson) falls for the sultry wife (Ms. Malone) of a barnstorming pilot (Mr. Stack).

But Ms. Malone's career appeared to succumb to what some call the Oscar curse. After winning the award, for best supporting actress, she never had as juicy a role again. Seemingly well-chosen follow-up parts - among them the suicidal first wife of Lon Chaney (James Cagney) in "Man of a Thousand Faces" (1957) and the self-destructive daughter of John Barrymore (Errol Flynn) in "Too Much Too Soon" (1958) - did little to advance her career.

By 1963 she was starring as one of the adults on the sidelines in "Beach Party," with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello.

The next year she won the role of Constance McKenzie, a sexy but seemingly repressed small-town New England mother with a dark secret, on the ABC series "Peyton Place." Based on the film based on Grace Metalious's best-selling novel, it was television's first nighttime soap opera and a solid ratings hit.