“Scream queen” Kathleen Hughes Rubin thrived for nearly a century in Hollywood. Despite her image as a sexy screen siren of the 1950s, she enjoyed an enduring marriage to producer Stanley Rubin, and was the beloved mother of four children and a joy to all who knew her.

The death of Kathleen Hughes May 19 at age 96 concluded a nostalgic chapter of cinematic history for the baby boomer generation who grew up with her films. For me, her passing was also the loss of a cherished friend. Kathy’s movie career began during the late 1940s as the studio system entered its Cretaceous Period by subsequently deploying CinemaScope, Vista Vision, Cinerama and similar innovations in an attempt to lure audiences away from their television sets and back into movie theaters. Science fiction and film noir became melded with the short-lived phenomenon of 3D, with Kathy becoming prominent by her appearances in...