Dick Van Dyke's co-star Pippa Scott dies as her family reveals her cause of death
Pippa Scott, who played one of the abducted daughters alongside Natalie Wood in John Ford's The Searchers, has died aged of 90 as her family paid tribute.
Actress Pippa Scott, known for her role alongside Natalie Wood in John Ford's The Searchers, has sadly died at the age of 90.
She died peacefully from congenital heart failure on May 22 at her family home in Santa Monica, according to her daughter Miranda Tollman. News of Pippa's death has only just been shared with fans.
Fans quickly took to social media platform X to express their condolences. One user wrote, "I'm so sorry to hear this. Look, even if you don't know her from her film career, if you were born in the 60s and grew up in the 70s, she was everywhere. She was a murder victim in Columbo and who better to be killed off by but Anne Baxter. Rest well, Pippa Scott."
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Another fan commented, "Very sad about Pippa Scott... from AUNTIE MAME to Perry Mason episodes, and a wonderful DVD episode, she was a joy. Heaven better batten down those hatches because here comes trouble!"
A third admirer posted, "#RIP Pippa Scott. She was Natalie Wood's sister in John Ford's The Searchers and Roger Smith's love interest in Auntie Mame, then helped Buddey Sorrell with his bar mitzvah on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Did tons of TV, was married to orimar's Lee Rich."
Scott's impressive filmography also includes roles in Morton DaCosta's Auntie Mame (1958), Gower Champion's My Loves (1963), Richard Lester's Petulia (1968), Norman Lear's Cold Turkey (1971) and Michael Lindsay-Hogg's The Sound of Murder (1982).
She also had a starring role in The Twilight Zone in 1960 and The Dick Van Dyke Show in 1966. Scott's rise to fame came when she played the character Lucy Edwards, the older sister of Wood's Debbie Edwards, in the John Wayne film The Searchers (1956).
In Auntie Mame, she played Pegeen, who famously ends up falling for Roger Smith's Patrick Dennis.
Phillippa Scott was born in Los Angeles on November 10, 1934 and her family has deep roots in the television industry.
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Her mother was the beloved stage actress Laura Straub while her father was Allan Scott, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter behind the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals Top Hat (1935) and Swing Time (1936).
Scott's uncle, writer-producer Adrian Scott, was blacklisted during the McCarthy era as one of the Hollywood Ten before she went on to appear in the 1964 film written by him, titled The Confession.
Educated at Radcliffe and UCLA before she trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, Scott made her Broadway debut in 1956 in Jed Harris' Child of Fortune, and in 1958 she starred as a teacher who is kidnapped in As Young As We Are.
Scott made guest appearances on numerous TV shows, including Mr. Lucky, The Virginian, Maverick, Thriller, Have Gun - Will Travel, Dr Kildare, The Fugitive, Wagon Train, Ben Casey, Perry Mason, Wagon Train, F Troop, I Spy, Family Affair, Medical Centre, Gunsmoke, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mission: Impossible, Barnaby Jones, Columbo, The Walktons, Ironside, The Streets of San Francisco, Mannix and Remmington Steele.
On the stage, she was part of the New York company for 1959's Look Back in Anger and 1984's Isn't It Romantic, and worked with John Houseman at UCLA on a 1973 production of Three Sisters, in preparation for the launch of Centre Theatre Group.
In 1964, Scott tied the knot with Lee Rich, a producer and founding partner of Lorimar Productions, which produced beloved shows like The Waltons, Dallas, Falcon Crest, Knots Landing, Eight Is Enough and The Blue Knight. They divorced in 1983 but rekindled their relationship in 1996 until his death in 2012.
Scott established the International Monitor Institute (IMI) in 1993. This nonprofit organization collected evidence to aid in the prosecution of war crimes in places like the Balkans, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Congo, Cambodia and Iraq, as well as the systematic use of rape and child soldiers in genocide.
The efforts of the IMI continue to support war crime prosecutions today through the Human Rights department at Duke University.
Scott also established Linden Productions, a company dedicated to shedding light on human rights abuses. Her portfolio includes projects commissioned by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch and the International Rescue Committee.
In 1998, she produced The World's Most Wanted Man for PBS' Frontline, a documentary about the hunt for Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. In 2006, she produced another documentary, King Leopold's Ghost, which explored the exploitation of the Congo by the king of Belgium.
After more than 20 years behind the camera, Scott made her final acting appearance in the 2009 indie film Footprints.
She is survived by her daughters Miranda and Jessica, along with her five grandchildren.
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