She was a terrific actress, and even won an Oscar for her role in Written on the Wind in the 1950s.
Which is all great, and she by all accounts had a nice life, passing at 92 and all.
But Malone’s passing is noted here because of an earlier movie she made, ten years before winning that Oscar.
Ask any movie buff what the number one, most white hot, sexy scene in The Big Sleep is, and they’re likely to tell you it wasn’t a scene with Lauren Bacall, stunning though young Miss Bacall was at the time.
Nope, it’s the bookstore scene, in which a young Dorothy Malone plays the archetype @tomchick owner of the Sarah Palin look, as the smart, sexy, blazingly hot book proprietor.
It’s been forever since I last saw The Big Sleep but I do definitely remember that scene and also Ms Malone. Every actor should get such a memorable role. Farewell, you will be missed.
She had a hell of a career. In fact, her last role before really calling it a day was in Basic Instinct.
But that scene. It’s hilarious looking at the twitter mentions of her tonight (and she’s trending, which is kind of amazing) because almost every one is “…and that scene in The Big Sleep…” I mean, this was still a long while before Lee Strasberg’s school and method acting pretty much changed movies and how people played roles. (Remember, so many actors and actresses had started on stage at this point, and so were used to “declaring” their lines in loud ways and being fairly un-subtle in their movements and actions.)
And so Bogey kind of is part of that old school. But in the middle of this movie, here’s Dorothy Malone giving Bogart eyes that would defrost the North Pole and slinking around ever so subtly, giving off a vibe like crazy while kind of controlling it all. I mean everything she’s doing in that scene – even separated from how sexy it is – is just jumping off the screen from the entire rest of the movie as “This person is doing something REALLY different.”
