[6] After understudying the role of Sabina in the original Broadway and Boston stage productions of The Skin of Our Teeth, she emerged in such films as The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), Dead Reckoning (1947), Desert Fury (1947), and Too Late for Tears (1949).

[40] Myerberg had just moved an experimental production of Thornton Wilder's new play The Skin of Our Teeth starring Tallulah Bankhead from New Haven to the Plymouth Theatre.

"[61] Scott appeared in a Harper's photographic spread, which was allegedly admired by film agent Charles Feldman of Famous Artists Corporation.

"[citation needed] Later in 1946, 37-year-old Barbara Stanwyck, in a letter, objected to Scott's top billing in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946): "I will not be co-starred with any other person other than a recognized male or female star."

[67] The screenplay by Robert Rossen depicts two separate story lines running in parallel—one dominated by Martha Ivers (Stanwyck) and the other by Antonia "Toni" Marachek (Scott).

The Heflin character, Sam, is the connection between the story lines, which overlap only in the one scene where femme fatale Martha and girl next door Toni meet.

Historian Kevin Starr wrote of a new type of Hollywood actress who began to appear on screen during the 1940s: The stars emerging in 1940, by contrast—Rita Hayworth, Ann Sheridan, Ida Lupino, Lupe Vélez, Marie Windsor, Lana Turner, Lizabeth Scott—each possessed a certain hardness, an invisible shield of attitude and defense, that suggested that times were getting serious and that comedy would not be able to handle all the issues... Just a few years earlier, Hollywood had been presenting the wisecracking platinum blonde, frank, sexy, self-actualizing.

[86] Scott played her third and last ingénue in the second favorite among her own films[87]—Pitfall (1948) with Dick Powell and Jane Wyatt as a middle-aged couple growing apart.

[92] Scott played the ultimate femme fatale in Too Late for Tears (1949), with Don DeFore, Dan Duryea, Arthur Kennedy, and Kristine Miller.

[105] In July 1949, Scott returned to the stage in the title role of Philip Yordan's play Anna Lucasta at the McCarter Theatre, on the campus of Princeton University, New Jersey.

[106] The press reported: "Folks who expected fireworks when Liz Scott and Tallulah Bankhead crossed paths at the Princeton Drama Festival were vastly disappointed.

In a continuing effort to escape her femme fatale typecasting, Scott played another self-sacrificing June Allyson-like character before reverting to her usual torch singer/socialite roles.

In The Company She Keeps (1951), she played Joan Willburn, a probation officer who sacrifices her fiancé to a scheming convict, Diane Stuart (Jane Greer).

[87][116] During Scott's spiritual search, she eventually met the Dalai Lama at a private reception at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

[120][121] In Two of a Kind (1951), Scott portrayed Brandy Kirby, a socialite who seduces a gambler, Michael "Lefty" Farrell (Edmond O'Brien), into joining a caper.

The film was released two months after the Kefauver hearings, in which Virginia Hill, and mistress of Siegel's,[122] denied having any knowledge of organized crime.

[123] Scott returned to Britain in October 1951 to film Stolen Face (1952), a noir that presages Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) by several years.

[124] Later that spring, Scott returned to her beginnings as a comedian when she began work on her first comedy noir, Scared Stiff, with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

Though the public response to Scott was generally favorable during the Paramount years, the film critics were less so, repeatedly making unfavorable comparisons to Lauren Bacall and Tallulah Bankhead,[137][138][139] beginning with Bob Thomas' March 1945 comment about her screen test: "Her throaty voice may well make Lauren Bacall sound like a mezzo soprano.

"[26] Nonetheless, in his review of I Walk Alone (1948), he stated: "As the torch singer ... Lizabeth Scott has no more personality than a model in the window of a department store.

[153][154][155] In Movieland, his personal history of Hollywood, Jerome Charyn described this style as "dreamwalking":[156] "And then, among the Dolly Sisters and Errol Flynn, Bing Crosby and Dotty Lamour, the Brazilian Bombshell, Scheherazade, Ali Baba, and the elephant boy—all the fluff and exotic pastry that Hollywood could produce—appeared a very odd animal, the dreamwalker, like Turhan Bey, Sonny Tufts, Paul Henreid, Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Lizabeth Scott, and Dana Andrews, whose face had a frozen quality and always looked half-asleep ...

The Rushmore article further stated that Scott spent her off-work hours with "Hollywood's weird society of baritone babes" (a euphemism for lesbians).

Meanwhile, Rushmore tried to get Confidential publisher Robert Harrison to run a story about former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt allegedly having an affair with her African-American chauffeur.

Rushmore, now the state's star witness, testified that the magazine knowingly published unverified allegations, despite its reputation for double-checking facts: "Some of the stories are true and some have nothing to back them up at all.

[203] Several books have claimed that prior to her relationship with Dugger, Scott was a mistress of renowned film producer Hal B. Wallis, who at that time was married to actress Louise Fazenda.

After a few years, Wallis made an effort to revive the relationship with Scott by making her the leading lady opposite Elvis Presley in Loving You (1957).

"[211] In the period between 1945 and the 1970s, the press reported Scott dating Van Johnson,[212] James Mason,[213] Helmut Dantine,[214] plastic surgeon Gregory Pollock,[215] Richard Quine,[216] William Dozier,[217] Philip Cochran,[218] Herb Caen,[219] Peter Lawford,[220] Anson Bond of the clothing store chain family,[221] Seymour Bayer of the pharmaceutical family,[222] David Mountbatten, Marquess of Milford Haven,[223] race-track owner Gerald "Jerry" Herzfeld,[224] and Eddie Sutherland,[225] among others.

[229] The director and screenwriter, Mike Hodges, spent a long time coaxing Scott out of retirement to fly to Malta for the shooting.

Despite disagreements among the cast, crew, and past critics, Pulp, as with the 1949 Too Late for Tears, is considered an artistic success by film historians.

The result was an entire chapter titled "Morning Star", in which the author observed Scott was still able to recite her opening monologue from The Skin of Our Teeth, which she had learned six decades earlier.