You are quite correct. When Hal Wallis cast Scott in Paramount productions, her characters were general sympathetic. "Dead Reckoning" was an interesting film that suffered in terms of continuity from multiple rewrites of the script.

Interestingly, the cover artwork on "Dark City: The Forgotten World of Film Noir" reproduces a scene from "Dead Reckoning." The illustration makes Scott's character, Coral Chandler, look more like Drew Barrymore than Scott.