Scott, George Campbell

▪ 2000

      American actor (b. Oct. 18, 1927, Wise, Va.—d. Sept. 22, 1999, Westlake Village, Calif.), was an intense, craggy-faced, raspy-voiced, hard-living, often-married (five times, twice to actress Colleen Dewhurst), heavy-drinking performer whose immense talent and versatility were illustrated by the wide range of characters he masterfully inhabited. The attention he attracted for what was perhaps his most famous role, the title character in Patton (1970), was multiplied when he refused to accept the Academy Award he won for it. Following his high-school graduation (1945), Scott enlisted in the Marines, expecting World War II combat duty. The war was soon over, however, and Scott spent much of his time in the corps burying bodies in Arlington National Cemetery, a duty to which he attributed his drinking habit. He then attended the University of Missouri School of Journalism, but a role in a student production of The Winslow Boy set him on a new path. After several years—and more than 100 plays—in American and Canadian stock companies, he landed (1957) the title role in the New York Shakespeare Festival's Richard III and performed it to great acclaim. For that role and two that followed within a year—Jacques in As You Like It and Lord Wainwright in Children of Darkness, Scott amassed a number of top awards. He made his Broadway debut in 1958 in Comes a Day, garnering a Tony Award nomination, and his television debut came that same year in A Tale of Two Cities. His first motion picture, The Hanging Tree, was released in 1959, and later that year his role as the prosecutor in Anatomy of a Murder made him a star and gained him his first Oscar nomination. He then portrayed some of his most memorable film characters: Paul Newman's nemesis in The Hustler (1961; Oscar nomination), the fatuous hawk Gen. Buck Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), con man Mordecai Jones in The Flim Flam Man (1967), Archie Bollen, a doctor, in Petulia (1968), and another doctor, the beleaguered idealist Herbert Block in The Hospital (1971; Oscar nomination). Three more plays earned him Tony nominations: The Andersonville Trial (1959), Uncle Vanya (1973), and Death of a Salesman (1975). On television he starred as a New York City social worker in the acclaimed series East Side/West Side (1963–64) and he also appeared in such productions as The Crucible (1967); Jane Eyre (1971); The Price (1971; Emmy Award, which he refused); Beauty and the Beast (1976); Oliver Twist (1982); and A Christmas Carol (1984). Among Scott's last performances were those in the made-for-TV remake of 12 Angry Men (1997; Emmy Award), the film Gloria (1999), and the made-for-TV remake of Inherit the Wind (1999).

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