Dorothy Malone, a famous actress for seductive parts, including an Oscar-winning performance as a nymphomaniacal rich girl in 1956's "Written on the Wind," and a role in the 1960s prime-time TV soap opera "Peyton Place," passed away on Friday at a Dallas assisted-living facility. In public records, her age was listed as 92.

Burt Shapiro, her manager, made her death public. The reason was kept a secret.

Malone came to Hollywood in the 1940s, at the height of the studio period, and starred in numerous films, including musicals, crime dramas, and westerns.

She first won praise for her seductive voice and stare in a small part alongside Humphrey Bogart in the noirish 1946 detective movie "The Big Sleep." She portrayed a bookshop clerk who, on a wet day, gladly gives Bogart's character Philip Marlowe a bottle of rye after helping him identify a suspect.

In a sequence that will live in memory, Malone takes off her spectacles, lowers a window shade (a gesture she made up while she was filming), and remarks, "Looks like we're closed for the rest of the afternoon."

Malone's dark hair was dyed blonde in 1954 so she could play Doris Day's sister in the musical "Young at Heart," which also starred Frank Sinatra. Her career was transformed by her new appearance.

In 1967, she stated, "I developed a conviction that the majority of the winners in this business became stars overnight by playing shady dames with sex appeal." "And ever since, I've been unfaithful, inebriated, or overindulgent—on screen, naturally."

Her best performance was maybe in the 1956 melodrama "Written on the Wind," which was directed by European immigrant Douglas Sirk and took place in her native Texas.

The Chicago Tribune was told in 1985 by Malone, "An agent kept calling me that there is a director from Europe who wants you and only you," as she described how she was cast. "As a director, he was every woman's dream.

Malone portrayed the pampered daughter of an oil baron who wasn't afraid to indulge her irrational cravings. In addition to drinking excessive amounts of alcohol and smoking virtually nonstop, Marylee Hadley's character shimmies to mambo music while wearing skimpy gowns and tries to woo a number of guys, including Lauren Bacall's character Rock Hudson, who is in love with another lady.

Malone and Hudson are seen driving off in a red sports car convertible in one clip.

"I'll have you," she adds, glancing sideways at him in an inviting manner. "To marry or not to marry."

Presenter Jack Lemmon attempted to interrupt Malone's speech after she won the 1957 Academy Award for best supporting actress by placing his wristwatch in front of her.

She co-starred with Hudson in two more movies: Sirk's 1957 romantic drama "The Tarnished Angels," which was about a love triangle in the world of barnstorming pilots during the Great Depression; and Kirk Douglas' 1961 western "The Last Sunset."

Top billing went to Malone on ABC's phenomenally famous series "Peyton Place" in 1964. The show was based on Grace Metalious's 1956 novel and two previous films. Constance MacKenzie, the character she portrayed, owned a bookstore in New England and kept a dark secret. Mia Farrow portrayed her daughter.

The first prime-time soap opera to air on television was "Peyton Place." It aired three episodes a week at its peak, with themes of small-town hypocrisy, secret identities, and adulterous relationships.

In 1965 and 1966, Malone had to take a hiatus from the production due to life-threatening blood clots in her lungs. Lola Albright briefly took her position before she rejoined the cast.

A year before "Peyton Place" concluded its run in 1969, Malone was fired from the show due to her complaints about the shallow nature of her character. She filed a lawsuit against the show's producers and was compensated out of court. In two made-for-TV films, "Murder in Peyton Place" (1977) and "Peyton Place: The Next Generation" (1985), she reprised her role as Constance.

Born in Chicago on January 30, 1925, Dorothy Eloise Maloney relocated to Dallas as a baby. Her dad worked as an auditor for a phone business.

At Southern Methodist University, she was participating in a student play when RKO Studios offered her a Hollywood contract. Later on, she joined Warner Bros. and her last name became “y”-only.

She went back to work for an insurance company in Texas in 1949, but she changed her mind and decided to give acting another go after visiting New York on business. Before going back to Hollywood, she worked in television and studied at the American Theatre Wing. In the late 1960s, she made Dallas her permanent home.

Following "Peyton Place," she starred in the 1976 miniseries "Rich Man, Poor Man," and she played a mother who killed her own children in the political drama "Winter Kills" (1979) and the courtroom thriller "Basic Instinct" (1992).

Her first union with Ginger Rogers' ex-husband, actor Jacques Bergerac, ended in divorce. She subsequently added, "I wish Ginger had warned me what he was like."

Her second marriage was dissolved when she married Robert Tomarkin, who was subsequently imprisoned for financial offenses. She divorced businessman Charles Huston Bell from her third marriage.

Six grandkids, a brother, retired U.S. Circuit Judge Robert Maloney of Dallas, and two daughters from her first marriage, Mimi Vanderstraaten and Diane Thompson, both of Dallas, are among her survivors.

According to reports, Malone made $250,000 a year for her performance in "Peyton Place," making her one of the highest-paid television actresses in the 1960s.

"Don't you believe it," she said in response to the Toronto Star's 1988 question about if she was set for life. My spouse used to take me to the dry cleaners. He was on the phone the day after our wedding, trying to sell me my belongings.