Pippa Scott

Philippa "Pippa" Scott (November 10, 1934 – May 22, 2025) was an American actress born in Los Angeles, California, whose career spanned stage, film, and television across several decades. She was the daughter of actress Laura Straub and screenwriter Allan Scott, and a niece of blacklisted screenwriter Adrian Scott. Before pursuing acting professionally, Scott studied at Radcliffe and UCLA, then trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in England.

Scott made her Broadway debut in 1956 in the drama Child of Fortune, earning a Theatre World Award in 1957. That same Broadway season also saw her appear in the drama Miss Lonelyhearts. Her stage work led swiftly to a contract with Warner Bros., and she made her film debut that year in John Ford's The Searchers, playing Lucy, a niece of John Wayne's character.

Her subsequent film appearances included the 1958 production As Young as We Are, in which she played a new high school teacher who falls in love with a character named Hank Moore, played by Robert Harland, who is revealed to be a student. That same year she appeared as Pegeen in the Warner Bros. film Auntie Mame. Her later notable film roles included the wife of Dick Van Dyke's character in the 1971 comedy Cold Turkey and Dabney Coleman's wife in the 1974 television movie Bad Ronald. In 2011 she returned to film in Footprints, which earned her a nomination for the Stockholm Krystal Award for Best Supporting Actress at the Method Fest Independent Film Festival.

Scott's television career was extensive. She played Abigail in a 1959 episode of Maverick and held a recurring role as Maggie Shank-Rutherford in the 1959–1960 CBS series Mr. Lucky, starring John Vivyan and Ross Martin. She also appeared on the ABC Western series The Alaskans, starring Roger Moore. From 1962 to 1963, she appeared in the first season of NBC's The Virginian in the recurring role of Molly Wood, publisher, editor, and reporter of The Medicine Bow Banner. Her guest credits included The Twilight Zone episode "The Trouble with Templeton," starring Brian Aherne and Sydney Pollack, in which she performed a 1920s dance sequence; The DuPont Show with June Allyson; Thriller; F Troop; Have Gun – Will Travel with Richard Boone; The Dick Van Dyke Show; Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.; The Rat Patrol; Redigo; The Tall Man with Clu Gulager; and Gunsmoke, in which she played a woman who falls in love with a native suitor after a year of captivity following a raid, in the season seven episode "Indian Ford." She made two appearances on Perry Mason, playing defendant Gwynn Elston in the 1963 episode "The Case of the Bigamous Spouse" and defendant Ethel Andrews in the 1966 episode "The Case of the Fanciful Frail." In 1964 she guest-starred alongside Eddie Albert and Claude Rains in "A Time to Be Silent," an episode of The Reporter, and appeared in "The Garden House," an episode of ABC's The Fugitive, starring David Janssen. She played an actress stranded in Virginia due to financial difficulties in a 1973 episode of The Waltons and a murder victim in the 1973 Columbo installment Requiem for a Falling Star. Her final regular television role was nursery-school teacher Maggie Hearn in the 15-episode 1976 NBC police drama Jigsaw John, starring Jack Warden.

Beyond acting, Scott produced, wrote, and directed the 2006 documentary King Leopold's Ghost, based on Adam Hochschild's book of the same name. In the 1970s she studied landscape architecture at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. By the 1990s she had become active in human-rights work, including supporting the United Nations Commission of Experts formed under Security Council Resolution 780 in its research into violations of international humanitarian law during the Bosnian genocide.

In 1964 Scott married Lee Rich, a founding partner of Lorimar Productions. They had two children and divorced in 1983, though they resumed their relationship in 1996 and remained together until his death in 2012. Scott died of heart failure at her home in Santa Monica, California, on May 22, 2025, at the age of 90.