European Film Star Postcards: Janette Scott

28 April 2022

Janette Scott

Janette Scott (1938) is a retired English actress, who started her career as a child actress at the age of 3. From the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, she was a leading lady in British films in which she co-starred with Terry-Thomas, Ian Carmichael, and Laurence Olivier. She is best remembered from the line "And I really got hot When I saw Janette Scott fight a triffid that spits poison and kills" in the opening song of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). Scott gave up her film career upon marrying singer Mel Torme.

German postcard by ISV, Sort 14/6. Photo: Janette Scott in The Beauty Jungle (Val Guest, 1964).

Her first screen kiss

Thora Janette Scott was born in 1938 in Morecambe, Lancashire, England. She is the daughter of actors Jimmy Scott and Thora Hird and began her acting career as a child actress known as Janette Scott.

She made her film debut only 3-years-old in the British war film Went the Day Well? (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1942), adapted from a story by Graham Greene. The film was produced by Michael Balcon of Ealing Studios and served as unofficial propaganda for the war effort. It tells of how an English village is taken over by German paratroopers.

After a few bit roles, she had her first big part as Jennifer in No Place for Jennifer (Henry Cass, 1950) with Leo Genn and Rosamund John. She played a young girl, who experiences a trauma when her parents' divorce. Another big role followed in the sports comedy The Galloping Major (Henry Cornelius, 1951), starring Basil Radford. The title is taken from the song 'The Galloping Major', and the plot was centered on gambling at the horse racing track.

She also co-starred in the British 20th Century Fox production No Highway in the Sky/No Highway (Henry Koster, 1951), starring James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich. Scott appeared in the British Technicolor biographical drama The Magic Box (John Boulting, 1951). The film stars Robert Donat as William Friese-Greene, who first designed and patented one of the earliest working cinematic cameras. Told in flashback, the film details Friese-Greene's tireless experiments with the 'moving image', leading inexorably to a series of failures and disappointments, as others hog the credit for the protagonist's discoveries.

Scott was briefly (along with Jennifer Gay) one of the so-called 'Children's Announcers' providing continuity links for the BBC's children's TV programs in the early 1950s. At the age of 14, Scott wrote her autobiography, 'Act One'. During the 1950s, she also appeared in such films as the divorce drama Background/Edge of Divorce (Daniel Birt, 1953) starring Valerie Hobson, the musical comedy As Long as They're Happy (J. Lee Thompson, 1955) starring Jack Buchanan and Diana Dors, and as Cassandra in the Hollywood epic Helen of Troy (Robert Wise, 1956), based on Homer's 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey'. Scott also had the leading role in the romance Now and Forever (Mario Zampi, 1956). It was Scott's first adult role in which she got her first screen kiss.

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. D 31. Photo: Independent Films.

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. D 475. Photo: Associated British.

Fighting a triffid that spits poison and kills

In the late 1950s, Janette Scott became a popular leading lady. She appeared with Ian Carmichael in the comedy Happy Is the Bride (Roy Boulting, 1958), and with Anna Neagle and Frankie Vaughan in The Lady is a Square (Herbert Wilcox, 1958). She is known to American audiences for her role as the parson's wife in The Devil's Disciple (Guy Hamilton, 1959) starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, and Laurence Olivier.

One of her other well-known roles is April Smith in the British comedy School for Scoundrels (Robert Hamer, 1960), based on the 'one-upmanship' books by Stephen Potter, in which Ian Carmichael and Terry-Thomas competed for her attention. Scott is referenced to in the song 'Science Fiction/Double Feature', the opening number from 'The Rocky Horror Show' and its film version The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975) for her participation in The Day of the Triffids (Steve Sekely, 1962): "And I really got hot When I saw Janette Scott fight a triffid that spits poison and kills." The British Science Fiction film stars Howard Keel and Nicole Maurey and was loosely based on the 1951 novel of the same name by John Wyndham.

She later appeared in the Hammer thriller Paranoiac (Freddie Francis, 1963) with Oliver Reed, Siege of the Saxons (Nathan H. Juran, 1963), set in the time of King Arthur, and the American horror-comedy The Old Dark House (William Castle, 1963), a remake of the 1932 film by James Whale. The photo of the postcard at the top of the post was produced for The Beauty Jungle/Contest Girl (Val Guest, 1964), about "the beauty profession and all of its hypocrisy and sordid publicity stunts", according to Wikipedia. Ordinarily a brunette, Scott dyed her hair blonde to take on a sort of sex bomb persona for the film.

Her final films were the American Science-Fiction Crack in the World (Andrew Marton, 1965) a 'doomsday disaster movie' filmed in Spain, and the American comedy Bikini Paradise/White Savage (Gregg Tallas, 1967). In the meantime, she had married American Jazz singer Mel Torme and gave up her career to raise a family. Janette Scott has been married three times: to Canadian singer and TV host Jackie Rae (1959-1965; divorced), Mel Tormé (1966-1977; divorced), and William Rademaekers (since 1981).

With Mel Tormé, she has two children, actress Daisy Tormé (1969) and songwriter James Tormé (1973). In 1997, she returned to the screen for a cameo in the popular TV series Last of the Summer Wine in the episode There Goes the Groom. Although she is credited in the cast of the British film How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (Robert B. Weide, 2008), Scott did not return to the cinema. Her character - the deceased mother of the Simon Pegg character - is seen only in flashbacks as a very young woman, extracts from her film Now and Forever (Mario Zampi, 1956).