Ms. Scott with Van Heflin in "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" (1946), one of her first films. Credit Paramount Pictures, via Photofest
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center confirmed the death, but did not give a cause.
Ms. Scott was billed as another Lauren Bacall or Veronica Lake, and in many of her 22 films she portrayed a good-bad girl with love in her head and larceny in her heart, or vice versa. Her co-stars were Humphrey Bogart, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster and other tough gents, and her movies' titles were lurid stuff: "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers," "Dead Reckoning," "Pitfall," "Dark City," "I Walk Alone" and "Bad for Each Other."
"When you say ambition to me, that's when you get me started!" Ms. Scott was widely quoted as saying. "My greatest ambition is to be the whoppingest best actress in Hollywood. You can't blame a girl for trying! I don't want to be classed as a 'personality,' something to stare at. I want to have my talents respected, not only by the public but by myself."
She had the goods: the luminous eyes and moist lips that belied a heart of stone, the slinky figure, the sculptured cheekbones, the cascading hair and husky voice suitable for torch songs or seductive close-ups. She gave a riveting performance as a killer in "Too Late for Tears" in 1949 and was captivating as Charlton Heston's singer girlfriend in the revenge thriller "Dark City" in 1950.
By then postwar film noir was losing its appeal, and her last foray into the genre was in "The Racket" (1951), with Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan. Later in the '50s she drifted into mediocre melodramas and even a western.
Ms. Scott's heyday lasted barely a decade, and film historians say it never matched the Bacall magic or the Lake sensuality. Her later performances were scorned by many critics, though some said she was thoroughly convincing in unsympathetic roles.