Frances Dee comes from a Hollywood past

Wholesomely gorgeous and possessed of wit and aplomb, the actress had her greatest fame as a contract player for Paramount and Samuel Goldwyn during the 1930s, anchoring the occasional screwball comedy, like 1935's "The Gay Deception," but more often playing good-girl parts opposite Davis in "Of Human Bondage" and Hepburn in "Little Women" (Dee played Meg, the oldest March sister). Never the hungriest of Hollywood names, Dee seemed more content to raise her children with actor-husband Joel McCrea ("Sullivan's Travels") and enjoy life on their New Mexico ranch.

Toward the end of her active film career, though, Dee appeared in what remains her most memorable starring role, as the beleaguered nurse in 1943's "I Walked With a Zombie." The lurid title is misleading: Produced by the gifted Val Lewton and based on "Jane Eyre," "Zombie" is a horror classic of subtle and eerie psychological depth. The actress, now 96, makes a very rare public appearance tonight at Tufts University's Barnum Hall, in tandem with a screening of "I Walked With a Zombie," as part of the Somerville Museum's yearlong "Lost Theatres of Somerville" exhibit.

Producer Lewton made horror hits that were notable for what they didn't show: "Cat People" (1942) is remembered for its terrifyingly oblique swimming pool sequence, and "The Seventh Victim" (1943), about a satanic cult in Manhattan, leaves all its chills to the imagination. Directed by Jacques Tourneur, "I Walked With a Zombie" transports "Jane Eyre" to Haiti and derives much of its suspense from shadows and the play of sound. Dee makes a lovely and common-sense audience surrogate who is slowly pulled into acknowledging the power of the unknown over her comatose, sleepwalking charge (Christine Gordon).

The movie is thinking-man's horror and a classic cult flick, a fact that Dee herself finds deliciously ironic, especially since she admits that tonight will be the first time she has seen the movie since it was released. "I just thought it was a terrible name," says the actress with a laugh, speaking by phone from her home. "I would turn away every time I said it. The reason I did the movie was that they offered me a sum that could buy my mother a new car. We got her the car -- and it turned out to be a cult kind of picture."

Dee is the last surviving actress to have auditioned for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in 1939's "Gone With the Wind." She was a finalist for the part of Melanie, but the story is that producer David O. Selznick was afraid her beauty might upstage Vivien Leigh in the lead and gave the role to Olivia de Havilland. By the time she made "Zombie," Dee was the mother of two young boys and had relocated from Hollywood to New Mexico, where the Chicago-raised actress found herself in clover.

"The kids begged and begged to go to the little country school down the road," she recalls. "At first the change was traumatic, and then it grabbed me: all the animals and things growing. A producer who worked with Joel couldn't believe it when I told him I was now a country mouse." After a third son was born in 1954, she quit the screen for good. No regrets; the marriage to McCrea lasted 57 years -- maybe a Hollywood record -- until his death in 1990.

The only slight disappointment Dee might have is that she didn't take the producers of 1997's "Titanic" seriously enough when they asked if she would be interested in the role of Rose. "I had just gotten back east to visit my family," Dee says, "when I got a call that they wanted to see me. I said, `I just got here, I can't go back,' " and so the role and an Oscar nomination went to Gloria Stuart.

Still, no regrets, and besides, Stuart never got to walk with a zombie. Dee signs off by inviting her interviewer to come play on her ranch. "We have a course out on the back, a darn good one they tell me, because I don't golf. I'll give you the keys and you get your golf clubs. Go out and play, come back, go up to the bar by the pool, and go upstairs and go to bed for two weeks."

It's a glimmer of old-school Hollywood noblesse oblige, all the more winning now for being so rare.

Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.