| Subject: George C. Scott, Celebrated for 'Patton' Role |
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Sep. 22, 1999
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Date Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2012, 11:06:18am
George C. Scott, an actor of extraordinary range and daring, celebrated for his performances as Gen. George S. Patton Jr. in the movie ''Patton'' and as Shakespeare's Richard III (in Central Park) and for his roles in countless other films and plays, died on Wednesday in his office in Westlake Village, Calif., near Los Angeles. He was 71.
The cause was a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm, the Associated Press reported. Jim Mahoney, Mr. Scott's publicist and friend, said that the actor ''had never been treated properly'' for an aneurysm that he suffered in New York in 1996. Mr. Mahoney said that Mr. Scott, who lived in Malibu, Calif., with his wife, the actress Trish Van Devere, and also had a home in Greenwich, Conn., had been working on his memoirs.
With a clear, articulate understanding of character and an almost volcanic intensity, Mr. Scott created a gallery of indelible portraits on stage and screen. Often cast in sinister roles, he played killers and con men, gamblers and thieves. But he also played doctors and social workers and so many lawyers, for the defense and the prosecution, that he could have taken up law as an alternative profession.
In common with Marlon Brando he was a natural, intuitive actor, but unlike Mr. Brando he scorned the Actors Studio and its Method. Unpredictable in the extreme, Mr. Scott carried with him a threat of violence, which was one reason he was often cast as a villain. He came alive onstage, with a visceral awareness of the power of performance. Acting before an audience, he once said, was like ''riding a terrific roller coaster.''
Seldom did he play losers. Even when one of his characters seemed to fail, he would come out of the ordeal with inner resilience. Mr. Scott's force of personality was irrepressible: it was hard for him to play simple, ordinary men. Passion rather than tenderness was his forte, but he could project sensitivity, as he did as a vulnerable doctor in love in the 1968 film ''Petulia.''
Whether he was playing a leading or a supporting role he was generally the dominant figure. With equal ease, he portrayed characters of contrasting ethics and temperament. On screen in ''The Hustler'' (1961), appearing with Paul Newman, he was a high-stakes gambler with an allegiance only to himself. Onstage in ''The Andersonville Trial'' in 1959 he was a prosecuting attorney with a keen sense of moral purpose. Though he was most identified with dramatic roles, he was also adept at comedy, moving easily from Eugene O'Neill to Sir Noel Coward.
Both in theater and in movies, audiences were riveted by his magnetism. Tall and lithe as a young man, he became heavier as he grew older. He conveyed a sense of authority, as if to say, don't tread on me. His features, sharp and chiseled, could have been sculptured by Rodin. In his voice was a raspy rumble. He could be chilling, both in manner and in speech.
A perfectionist, Mr. Scott was as demanding of himself as he was of his colleagues. Because of his fiery temper, he acquired a reputation for being difficult. He had no time for career-building. Throughout his life, he remained independent, avoiding long-term contracts and sometimes changing his mind about playing a role at the last minute.
In Hollywood he was considered a renegade. He declined three straight nominations for Academy Awards, for his performances in ''Anatomy of a Murder,'' ''The Hustler'' and ''Patton,'' not for any doubts about his acting but because he reacted against the ''childish and damaging unnatural competitiveness'' of the awards. Despite his attitude, he won an Oscar in 1971 as best actor for ''Patton,'' a role for which he was also honored by the New York Film Critics Society and the National Society of Film Critics. The next year he won an Emmy for his work in Arthur Miller's play ''The Price'' on television. He refused that, too.
Patton became the defining role of his career. When he made a sequel for television in 1986, he said, ''After 35 years in the business, people still identify me more with Patton than any other character.'' No wonder: from the opening moment of the film he was Patton. An American flag fills the screen as Mr. Scott, all spit and polish, strides on and delivers a smart salute. ''All real Americans love the sting of battle,'' he says, adding, ''That's why Americans have never lost and never will lose a war.''
In 1964 he had played the flip side of the warrior soldier. In direct contrast to his highly dramatic Patton, he was equally memorable in the uproariously comic role of the bomb-happy Gen. Buck Turgidson in Stanley Kubrick's ''Dr. Strangelove.''
Of Mr. Scott's performance in a Broadway revival of ''Death of a Salesman,'' the director and critic Harold Clurman said: ''He is an actor of tremendous clout. He is always vivid, never less than arresting. He is one of the few American actors who create the impression of a mature manliness: most others strike me as grown-up boys.''
Offstage as well as in character, he projected a swaggering self-assurance. When he was in the Marines, he broke his nose five times: hence his craggy look. Then and later he made no secret about his drinking, describing himself as a ''functioning alcoholic.'' His life was marred and his career damaged by drunken tantrums and barroom brawls. He was married five times, twice to Colleen Dewhurst, with whom he often appeared on stage, and he had several well-publicized romances, including one with Ava Gardner, who starred with him in the film ''The Bible.'' Since 1972, he had been married to Ms. Van Devere.
Of Challenges And Health Problems
He made his New York debut as ''Richard III'' for the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1957, at the Hecksher Theater in Central Park. After that came several decades of prolific and rewarding work in theater and films, but increasingly he seemed to shy away from challenging himself. Although the natural progression would have been for him eventually to play King Lear, ''The Merchant of Venice'' was his last effort at Shakespeare. He also missed other titanic roles for which he was suited. When he went back to Broadway in 1991, it was as a cozy curmudgeon in ''On Borrowed Time,'' by Paul Osborn.
In 1996, he was on Broadway again in a revival of ''Inherit the Wind'' as a lawyer based on Clarence Darrow. It was the kind of flamboyant role that should have been the capstone of his career. But he became ill during rehearsal and the opening was postponed. When the play finally opened, Mr. Scott received favorable notices and was nominated for a Tony Award, an honor that had eluded him. Because of illness, he missed several performances. Once he left the stage in the middle of the show and was replaced by Tony Randall, who produced the play through his National Actors Theater. Subsequently, it was disclosed that Mr. Scott had an aortic aneurysm.
Further clouding his triumphant year, an actress who had been his personal assistant accused him of sexual harassment. Early in May he left ''Inherit the Wind'' and went to California for medical treatment.
Soon he recovered and returned to acting. In 1997 he was in a new television version of ''Twelve Angry Men'' (with Jack Lemmon and Hume Cronyn). For that performance he won an Emmy Award as best supporting actor in a mini-series or movie. Two years later he and Mr. Lemmon starred in a television movie of ''Inherit the Wind.''
Onstage, Mr. Scott had played Henry Drummond, the character based on Clarence Darrow, who defended John T. Scopes in the trial about the teaching of evolution. In the television film, Mr. Lemmon played Drummond and Mr. Scott switched to his opponent, Matthew Harrison Brady, based on William Jennings Bryan, the prosecutor in the case. Playing the proud and defiant Brady, Mr. Scott gave an impassioned performance, as he assailed ''this crime against man and God.'' As persuasive as he was as the Darrow character, he seemed even more comfortable as the supremely confident man on the attack.
Although Mr. Scott had said that acting became more difficult over the years, in a television interview after filming ''Inherit the Wind,'' he said, ''I've done 50 films and I don't know how many television shows and 150 plays. Why would I have pressure at my age?'' And he laughed.
An Athlete And Aspiring Writer
George Campbell Scott, the grandson of a coal miner, was born on Oct. 18, 1927, in the Appalachian coal town Wise, Va. Facing the Depression, his father moved his family to Detroit, where he worked on the Buick assembly line and later became a businessman. His mother, a semi-invalid, was an amateur poet and elocutionist who gave recitations; she died when he was 8, and he was brought up by his sister, Helen. At Redford High School in Detroit he was an athlete and aspiring fiction writer.
After he graduated in 1945, he joined the Marines. Missing combat duty, he spent four years at a desk job in Washington and on the graves detail at Arlington National Cemetery. Looking back on his military days, he said, ''I stayed drunk most of the time.'' After his discharge, he enrolled at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Casually he tried out for and won a role in a student production of Terence Rattigan's play ''The Winslow Boy.'' His pleasure in performance was immediate. ''I was hooked,'' he said.
''It's never been difficult to subjugate myself to a part because I don't like myself too well,'' he once told an interviewer. ''Acting was, in every sense, my means of survival.''
In search of a career, he played more than 125 roles in stock companies and moved to Washington, supporting himself as a construction worker. In 1956 he came to New York and worked nights operating a check-sorting machine in a bank while trying with increasing futility during the days to find acting jobs.
In 1957, having been an unsuccessful actor for seven years, he was about to give up on the theater. ''I had been failing that whole year,'' he said. ''I was as low as anyone could be.'' Then he heard about the forthcoming production of ''Richard III,'' for Joseph Papp's newly formed New York Shakespeare Festival. He managed to get an audition, was called back for a second try and by his own measure failed the test.
''I started to drink,'' he said. ''And I got very depressed. I said, 'I can't let this job go.' I called and begged for another chance.'' He was allowed to read again, and prepared by memorizing two soliloquies. ''After two or three days of agony, Joe called and said, 'You got the job.' I damned near died.''
Totally unknown and inexperienced in Shakespeare, he made his New York debut, outdoors, in one of the most demanding of classical roles, and he was mesmerizing. Critics soared into superlatives and four decades later Mr. Scott's Richard is remembered by those who saw it as the towering performance of Shakespeare in the park, the one that all others are measured against. Mr. Scott said years later that not a day went by that he did not think of his early Shakespearean performances. It was for him the best of times.
Partners Onstage And in Life
After ''Richard III'' his career took off. Two months later he played the melancholic Jacques in ''As You Like It,'' and quickly followed that as the diabolical Lord Wainwright in a revival of ''Children of Darkness'' at Circle in the Square. For all three roles played within the space of one year he won a series of acting awards. In ''Children of Darkness'' his co-star was Ms. Dewhurst. They were a tempestuous couple on and off stage. (They were married in 1960, divorced, married again and divorced.) As ''Antony and Cleopatra,'' they were, said Mr. Scott, in an emotional sense ''like two drunken lovers.''
He is survived by his wife, Ms. Van Devere; a daughter, Victoria, from his first marriage, to Carolyn Hughes; a son, Matthew, and another daughter, Devon Scott, from his second marriage, to Patricia Reed; and two other sons, Alexander and Campbell, an actor, from his marriage to Ms. Dewhurst.
In 1958, only a year after ''Richard III,'' he made his Broadway debut in ''Comes a Day,'' opposite Judith Anderson. Playing a psychopath, every evening he decapitated a pet bird onstage. On the strength of that malicious performance, he won his role as a prosecutor in Otto Preminger's ''Anatomy of a Murder'' (his second movie; his first was ''The Hanging Tree,''in which he played a villain).
''Anatomy of a Murder'' became a major turning point in his life. As Ms. Dewhurst said in her autobiography, at the preview of the film, ''as flashbulbs exploded throughout the night,'' she watched him go ''from being an actor to being a star.'' From then on, his twin career was in overdrive. He played a prosecutor in the Civil War drama ''The Andersonville Trial,'' a hero of the Warsaw ghetto in ''The Wall'' and he played three comic roles in Mr. Simon's ''Plaza Suite'' on Broadway, ''The Merchant of Venice'' for the New York Shakespeare Festival (he considered his performance as Shylock a high point of his career), O'Neill's ''Desire Under the Elms'' at Circle in the Square and Lillian Hellman's ''Little Foxes'' at Lincoln Center.
In films, he did ''The Hustler,'' ''The List of Adrian Messenger,'' ''Dr. Strangelove,'' ''The Flim Flam Man'' and ''Petulia.''
On television, he starred for several seasons as a social worker in ''East Side, West Side,'' and he and Ms. Dewhurst played the ill-fated Proctors in an adaptation of Mr. Miller's ''Crucible'' and also played husband and wife in ''The Price.''
The next turning point in his career was ''Patton.'' Searching for an actor to play the title role, Frank McCarthy, the producer of the film, sought the advice of Darryl F. Zanuck, the head of 20th Century Fox. Mr. Zanuck showed him ''The Bible,'' and said, ''There's your Patton.'' Hidden under the beard of Abraham was Mr. Scott.
Subsequently he acted in ''They Might Be Giants'' (as a lunatic judge who thinks he is Sherlock Holmes), ''The Hospital'' (as a suicidal doctor, Paddy Chayevsky's idea of a modern hero), ''Movie Movie'' (Larry Gelbart's spoof of Hollywood), ''The Formula'' (in which he acted with Mr. Brando), ''Taps'' and ''Malice.'' This year he was in ''Gloria,'' a remake of John Cassavetes's 1980 film. He also played Fagin, Scrooge and Mussolini on television.
Behind the Camera And the Curtain
He also began moving into directing. While his films ''Rage'' and ''The Savage Is Loose'' failed, he was successful as a director onstage (of ''Death of a Salesman'' and ''Present Laughter,'' among others). On Broadway he appeared in ''Uncle Vanya'' (as Dr. Astrov) and ''Sly Fox.'' In 1986, he and John Cullum starred in ''The Boys in Autumn.''
In honor of Mr. Scott, the lights of all Broadway theaters were dimmed for one minute last night.
Despite his frequent threats to stop acting onstage, Mr. Scott repeatedly returned. ''I'm too mean to quit,'' he said. For him, movies were ''a tedious, deadly, boring way to make a living,'' and he said he worked in the theater ''to stay sane.''
He said there were only two kinds of actors: ''risk actors and safe actors.
''Safe actors hold back, experiment not, dare not, change nothing and have no artistic courage,'' he said. ''I call them walkers. I may stagger a little now and then, but I have never been accused of walking.''
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