Oscar-Winning Actress Dorothy Malone of ‘Peyton Place’ and ‘Basic Instinct’ Dies at 92

Dorothy Malone, an Oscar-winner for her performance in Written on the Wind and a television icon thanks to Peyton Place, has died at the age of 92.

Malone died Friday morning in Dallas, manager Burt Shapiro told Variety.

Malone’s career began in 1940, but she had to wait until 1945 for her first credited roles. In 1946, she gave a scene-stealing performance in a book shop in The Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

However, it was not until 10 years later that her career took a new turn. That year, she appeared in Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind with Bacall, Rock Hudson and Robert Stack. She won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role as the nymphomaniac Marylee.

The Oscar led to roles in Too Much, Too Soon, Man of a Thousand Faces and Warlock. She also appeared with Hudson in The Tarnished Angels and The Last Sunset.

In the 1960s, she began focusing on television. She played Constance Mackenzie on Peyton Place from 1964 to 1968, and appeared in subsequent reunion movies. Her other TV projects included Rich Man, Poor Man and Condominium.

In 1992, she appeared in her final film, Basic Instinct. She plated a mother convicted of killing her family in the Michael Douglas-Sharon Stone film.

Malone, who was born Dorothy Maloney in Chicago, drew up in Dallas. She attended Southern Methodist University. She was married and divorced three times.

Malone is survived by her two daughters from her marriage to Jacques Bergerac, Mimi and Diane. She moved her family back to Dallas in the late 1960s.

“She was always a joy. When I had a scene with her, I knew it was going to be a good one,” Malone’s Peyton Place co-star Ed Nelson told the Los Angeles Times in 2009. “Dorothy had one quality that they never captured, and that was her marvelous sense of humor. We used to laugh around the set all the time.”

Her daughter Mimi told the Times in 2009 that her mother’s down-to-earth quality would “play well right now.”

“It’s not something you can be taught. She was always down-home and caring about her family, but when she would turn it on [for the camera], it was like magic to watch,” Malone’s daughter said.

Photo credit: Twitter / @THR / Photofest