Actress Dorothy Malone has died at age 103. She began making films in 1943 with a series of small parts, of which the most indelible came in 1948’s The Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart. Malone plays a bookstore clerk who takes a liking to Bogie’s Sam Spade and initiates a quickie. As has been noted by many, it’s one of the sexiest moments in cinema and all she takers off is her glasses.
After turning platinum blonde, she won an Oscar for her supporting performance in the 1956 Douglas Sirk melodrama Written on the Wind. After lots of TV success (Peyton Place, et al), her final movie role was a fittingly juicy one, a pleasantly smiling murderer, in Basic Instinct (1992).
