Actor George C. Scott passes away, age 71
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See the article in its original context from September 1999.
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Scott died Wednesday at his home in Westlake Village in Ventura County, about 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles. His publicist's wife said Thursday she didn't know the cause of death. "They just found him and are trying to find out what happened," Pat Mahoney said. "He was on again, off again for a while. He just expired."
Scott captivated audiences in roles ranging from the dangerously explosive, yet sympathetic Patton in 1970 to the fatuous blowhard Gen. Buck Turgidson in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film "Dr. Strangelove."
The two were opposite ends of a spectrum of his memorable film characters: the shark on the sidelines who tries to devour Paul Newman in "The Hustler"; the high-powered ringer brought in to steamroll small-town lawyer James Stewart in "Anatomy of a Murder"; the dedicated doctor ground down by bureaucracy and institutional incompetence in "The Hospital."
On television, he etched a gritty portrait of a social worker fighting a tide of urban misery in the television series "East Side/West Side."
On stage, when at age 68 Scott rose from a sickbed to star in the 1996 Broadway revival of "Inherit the Wind," one critic said it was like watching a horse buggy powered by a Ferrari engine.
In private life, he was for years a bellicose drinker whose profile was marked by a nose broken five times, barroom brawls and one mugging. He was married five times twice to the same woman, actress Colleen Dewhurst.
With his highly publicised rejection of the Academy Award more than a decade in the future, Scott mopped up nearly every prize in sight for eye-catching performances when he hit the New York stage in 1957 and 1958.
He had spent seven years as an unknown, playing in stock theatre companies and living on menial jobs, preparing for the breakthrough that came when he was 30 years old and caught the eye of Joseph Papp, impresario of the New York Festival. Shakespeare In rapid succession, he played the title role in "Richard III" in November 1957, Jacques in "As You Like It" in January 1958 and a poisoning peer in the off-Broadway "Children of Darkness" in March 1958. He received awards for his work in all three productions.
Later the same year, his Broadway debut in "Comes a Day" was recognised with the first of what would be four Tony Award nominations. The others were for "The Andersonville Trial" in 1959, "Uncle Vanya" in 1974 and "Death of a Salesman," which he also directed, in 1975. Over his career he also won two Obies, two television Emmys out of five nominations, and he was nominated for Oscars four times. His role in the movie "Anatomy of a Murder" brought his first Academy Award nomination in 1959. He said nothing about it.
But when he was nominated again in 1962, for "The Hustler," he wired the academy "no thanks." The academy did not withdraw his name, but he didn't win either. Scott said later he did not think he'd ever again be nominated and regretted only that "I wasn't able to shock the academy into doing something constructive" about what he viewed as a meaningless popularity contest.
The academy ignored his withdrawal again in 1970 and gave Scott the best-actor Oscar, to go with Golden Globe and New York Film Critics honours, for "Patton." The movie received seven Academy Awards. Scott said he spent the evening watching hockey. His last nomination was for "The Hospital" in 1971. A score of movies would follow, including "The Savage Is Loose," which flopped.
Scott was born in Wise, Va., a coal town, on 18 Oct., 1927, but grew up in Detroit. He joined the Marines in 1945, too late for action in World War II and spent his four years in service burying the dead at Arlington by day and drinking at night.
He left the Missouri School of Journalism in 1950 without a degree and threw himself into acting, performing in more than 100 roles with stock companies in Toledo, Ohio; Washington and Ontario, Canada.
During this time, his marriages to Carolyn Hughes and Patricia Reed produced two daughters, Victoria and Devon, and a son, Matthew.
He met Dewhurst when they appeared together in "Children of Darkness" and they married in 1960, divorced in 1965, remarried in 1967 and divorced in 1972. They had two sons, Alexander and Campbell.
Scott also acknowledged a sixth child, born out of wedlock during his school years. He and Van Devere married in 1972.
