Evelyn Keyes played Scarlett O’Hara’s sister Suellen in Gone with the Wind (1939) and went on to leading roles in such films as the comedy Here Comes Mr Jordan (1941) and The Jolson Story (1946). She made more than 40 films between the mid-1930s and mid-1950s. But her later achievements as an actress were overshadowed by that early role of the sister who loses her man to her more cunning sister, and also by Keyes’s own colourful and often turbulent personal life.

She was married to the film directors John Huston and Charles Vidor and to the band leader Artie Shaw, and was romantically linked with Howard Hughes, David Niven, Kirk Douglas and the producer Mike Todd.

Her second husband was Vidor, who was married to the actress Karen Morley when their relationship began. She proposed to Huston after just a few dates, they immediately chartered a plane to Las Vegas and married in the middle of the night. Huston revealed in his memoirs that by the following morning he was already thinking of an annulment.

Returning from one film he brought home a chimpanzee, which created havoc in the house, prompting Keyes to give him an ultimatum that it was either the chimp or her. David Niven claimed Huston chose the chimp, though Keyes told the same story, but with Huston choosing her. The marriage had previously been put under strain when Huston returned from filming The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) with an orphan and announced he was to be their new son.

Times Archive, 1940: Gone with the Wind

There are several accidents and hairbreadth escapes. No-one could quarrel with such luxurious entertainment

Her personal life was well documented by the gossip columnists of the times and also in her autobiography Scarlett O’Hara’s Younger Sister (1977), which The New York Times described as “a sexual odyssey up and down the decades, in which Evelyn Keyes pauses only occasionally to mention a movie she has just started or just finished”.

She was born in Port Arthur, Texas, in 1916 (though some sources give a later year). Her father died when she was an infant, and she grew up largely in Atlanta and worked as a dancer in nightclubs in her teens. Moving to Hollywood, she secured a contract with Cecil B. DeMille and made her film debut with a supporting role in The Buccaneer in 1938.

That same year she married an English businessman, Barton Bainbridge, the first of four husbands, and began work on Gone with the Wind. By the time it came out she had appeared in several other films, including the western Union Pacific (1939).

Gone with the Wind became the most successful film ever and propelled Keyes towards more important roles. As well as co-starring with Robert Montgomery in Here Comes Mr Jordan, she also starred in Before I Hang (1940), The Face Behind the Mask (1941), Vidor’s Ladies in Retirement (1941) and The Desperadoes (1943). But already her career seemed hopelessly intertwined with the complications of her personal life. Her first husband killed himself in 1940; she married Vidor in 1943, divorced in 1945, married Huston in 1946 and divorced in 1950 — the marriage had lasted longer than most people thought it would.

She appeared in a wide range of films, from comedies to film noir, frequently changing her hair colour in an attempt to reinvent herself. She seemed well suited to the role of blonde femme fatale in Joseph Losey’s The Prowler (1951), but she noted that while Gone with the Wind brought her the chance of leading roles, she was always known as the actress who played Scarlett O’Hara’s sister.

In 1955 she was back playing support to a more memorable female star in The Seven Year Itch. She was the wife whose absence facilitates Tom Ewell’s relationship with Marilyn Monroe. While living with Todd she suggested Niven for the lead role in his film of Around the World in Eighty Days (1956). She had a small role in the movie (as “The Flirt”), but Todd left her for Elizabeth Taylor almost as soon as the film was completed.

She married Artie Shaw in 1957 and they lived in Spain. She was Shaw’s eighth wife, but the marriage lasted almost 30 years, though it too ended in divorce. Shaw died in 2004 and Keyes had been involved in protracted legal wrangling over his estate.

In later years she made only occasional film and television apperances, including The Love Boat (1983), A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) and several episodes of Murder, She Wrote (1985-93). As well as two volumes of memoirs, she also wrote a novel and a column for the Los Angeles Times. She pursued an active lifestyle and continued running well into her eighties.

Evelyn Keyes, actress, was born on November 20, 1916. She died on July 4, 2008, aged 91