I'm writing to note the passing of the fine actress Hazel Court at the age of 82, and also to curse the Associated Press, for a sneering, dismissive story on her death.
"Like other 'scream queens of the era," claims the AP, "Court often relied on her cleavage and her ability to shriek in fear and die horrible deaths for her roles."
Uh, well--no. Okay, it's true about the cleavage. She was, after all, the female lead in Terence Fisher's The Curse Of Frankenstein, the first true Hammer horror film and thus, to some of us, a work of seismic importance. Like any actress in a Hammer production, her cleavage is the most notable aspect of her role, though she makes surprisingly little impact here. (Curse is an embryonic picture in most ways. Even Christopher Lee isn't particularly memorable in it.)
She's much better--and, yes, her bust gets more of a workout--in a later film Fisher directed for Hammer, The Man Who Could Cheat Death. But she really came into her own with her work in Roger Corman's fabled Poe adaptations of the sixties, as a willing apprentice of the dark arts in The Masque Of The Red Death, and in a wonderful comic performance as the duplicitous Lenore in The Raven. None of her roles depended on her "ability to shriek in fear," and if the roles called for her to "die horrible deaths"--which they often didn't, incidentally--well, that's what acting is about.
She was a working actress, and should be remembered as such.
