Zohra Lampert

Zohra Lampert (born 13 May 1937) is an American actress, who has had roles on film, television and stage. She may be best remembered for her role as the title character in the 1971 cult horror film Let's Scare Jessica to Death, as well as starring alongside Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty in the 1961 romance film Splendor in the Grass.

Biography

Personal life

Lampert was born in New York City, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants Rachil Eriss, a draper and hatmaker, and Morris Lampert, an architect and ironworker.^[1] Lampert attended New York's High School of Music and Art, and then the University of Chicago. She was briefly married to actor Bill Alton from 1957 to 1958.

Career

After initially working for several years on stage, eventually reaching Broadway in a Tony-nominated performance in 1961s Look We've Come Through, she scored with a pair of small but noteworthy performances in the films Pay or Die and Splendor in the Grass.

Throughout most of the 1960s and 1970s she kept busy with a series of mostly supporting roles in film and television, winning an Emmy for her performance as a sinister gypsy on an episode of Kojak (1975), and she also costarred with Gena Rowlands in John Cassavetes' Opening Night (1978).

She was a regular in the sitcom The Girl With Something Extra and the medical drama Doctors' Hospital. During the early 1970s, she created the role of Ellie Jardin on the CBS soap, Where the Heart Is, until her character was killed off in 1972.

During the 1980s and 1990s, she worked less, though she could be seen in roles as diverse as The Exorcist III (playing late actor George C. Scott's wife), and the offbeat 1999 film, The Eden Myth, her last feature film role.

Filmography

Television