British-born actress Hazel Court died 15 April 2008 of a heart attack. Born 10 February 1926 in Birmingham, England, she started her career as “pert, pretty, and versatile actress who… was the epitome of the deceptively demure, often spunky, but very English heroine in British films of the 1940s” (according to the Independent), but will probably be best known as a “scream queen” from her work in the horror films of the 1950s and ’60s.
She starred in five Roger Corman films, including The Raven (1963), his take on the Edgar Allen Poe poem that also starred Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, and Peter Lorre. Much of her work, according to the New York Times, “relied on her cleavage and her ability to shriek in fear and die horrible deaths.”
She first appeared on stage as a teenager, and then was signed by the J. Arthur Rank Organisation (which owned movie studios and theaters). Her first bit part in a movie came at the age of 18, in Champagne Charlie. She quickly became a popular actress and a pinup girl. Her daughter, Sally Walsh, announcing her death, said “She was one of the great beauties of all time. She was a redhead with really green eyes and almost… the perfect face. She was on the cover of almost every magazine.” She worked both sides of the Atlantic, co-starring in the British television comedy series Dick and the Duchess (1957) and working on US television’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents later in the decade.
Her genre film appearances include: Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), The Raven (1963), Premature Burial (1962), Doctor Blood’s Coffin (1961), The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959), The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Devil Girl from Mars (1954), and Ghost Ship (1952). Her genre television appearances include: The Wild Wild West (1966), The Twilight Zone (1964), Thriller (1961), and Invisible Man (1959).
After her retirement from acting in the 1970s, she took up stone sculpting. She studied in Italy, and was commissioned to do a sculpture for the library at Pennsylvania State University. Her autobiography, Hazel Court: Horror Queen, is scheduled to be published by Tomahawk Press in June.
She was married to actor Dermot Walsh from 1949 until their divorce in 1963. The following year, she married American actor and director Don Taylor, who died in 1998. She is survived by her daughter, Sally Walsh and Courtney Taylor; her son, Jonathan Taylor; and her stepdaughters, Anne Taylor Fleming and Avery Taylor.