The Full Biography
George C. Scott. Actor. The Wise, Virginia, Marine who made rage into a classical instrument and then refused the statue the town sent for it.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is Patton in front of a flag, a speech that is a sermon and a threat. 1970. What the still cannot show is George Campbell Scott of Wise, Virginia, a journalist’s son, a Marine who did not see combat and did not romanticize the Corps, and a long life of more rage, more marriages, and a death in 1999 that the refusal still outshines.
He was born on October 18, 1927, in Wise, in the Appalachian corner of Virginia, to George Dewey Scott, who worked in mining and then in the auto business, and Helena Agnes Slemp. His mother died when he was eight. The family moved to Detroit. He graduated Redford High, spent a year at the University of Missouri, and enlisted in the Marines in 1945. He served four years, much of it at Arlington, as a guard at the cemetery. He did not see combat. He did not sell a combat myth. He came home, went back to Missouri, studied journalism, found the theater, and taught. The face was not a leading man’s in the Gable sense. It was exactly a leading man’s in the sense that would arrive: a jaw, a growl, a man who looked as if he had already lost an argument and was deciding whether to continue it.
New York took the growl. Off-Broadway, Richard III in 1957 at the Heckscher Theatre, a hunchback that made the critics use the word “force.” He played Shylock. He played Antony. He treated Shakespeare as a job, not a costume. Broadway followed: Comes a Day, The Andersonville Trial in 1959 as the prosecutor Chipman, a Civil War court-martial he would return to on television. Live television kept him in rooms that did not allow a second take. Otto Preminger put him in Anatomy of a Murder (1959) as Claude Dancer, the Army prosecutor who slices a courtroom. James Stewart is the defense. Lee Remick is the weather. Scott was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. He asked that the nomination be withdrawn. The Academy counted it anyway. That was the first version of the policy. The Hustler (1961) made him Bert Gordon, the gambler who owns Fast Eddie Felson and does not blink. Paul Newman is the pool player. Another nomination. Another man who looks as if kindness would be a tactical error. The List of Adrian Messenger (1963). The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964). He was already a classical actor the movies had learned to point at men who do not apologize.
Stanley Kubrick hired him for Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) as General Buck Turgidson, a man who can discuss megadeaths and chewing gum in the same breath. Kubrick printed takes Scott did not know were being shot — broader, funnier, a war inside the comedy. Scott resisted. The performance is the residue. He was already, by then, a classical actor the movies had learned to point at generals. Franklin J. Schaffner pointed him at the one that would stick. Patton (1970) opens on a flag the size of a wall and a speech to troops the camera never shows. He played George S. Patton as a man who loves war the way some men love God, and is punished for the love. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor. He had already said he would not take it. He called the ceremony a meat parade. He watched a hockey game instead. The town never forgave the insult and never stopped using the clip. He meant the refusal. It was not a bit.
He kept working as if the statue were someone else’s problem. The Hospital (1971), from Paddy Chayefsky, made him Dr. Herbert Bock, a chief of medicine who is also a wreck; another nomination. They Might Be Giants (1971) put him opposite Joanne Woodward as a man who thinks he is Sherlock Holmes. The New Centurions (1972) made him a Los Angeles cop in a Joseph Wambaugh picture. Rage (1972), which he also directed, put him in a father’s revenge after a chemical accident. Oklahoma Crude (1973) opposite Faye Dunaway. The Day of the Dolphin (1973) for Mike Nichols, a science picture about talking animals and a plot. Bank Shot (1974). The Hindenburg (1975). Islands in the Stream (1977), from Hemingway, a quiet father picture the poster people skip. He directed on stage and on film. He drank. He could be violent in a room and surgical on a take. Colleagues have said both. He married five times, including Colleen Dewhurst twice. Two sons with Dewhurst, including Campbell Scott. He married Trish Van Devere in 1972 and stayed with her. The house was weather.
The ceremonies are a two-hour meat parade, a public display with contrived suspense for economic reasons.George C. Scott, on the Oscars
The turn is the refusal. Other men have skipped nights. He skipped the premise. The career after the flag is a man who had already decided the town’s love was not a currency he needed. That decision cost him some parts and saved him a kind of groveling. He paid both prices without a press tour.
Six things most people never knew
- Wise, Virginia, is the first address. Appalachia, not a conservatory. The roar has a county in it.
- The Marines were service, not a combat myth he sold. Arlington. He taught afterward. Patton sits on a man who knew the uniform and did not worship it.
- Kubrick’s extra takes on Turgidson are a war inside the comedy. Scott resisted. The performance is the residue.
- He refused the Oscar before he won it. 1970. Not a surprise snub of the night. A policy. He had already tried to withdraw the 1959 nomination.
- Dewhurst twice is a real marriage plot. Two sons, including Campbell Scott. The house was weather.
- The 1984 Christmas Carol is a second civic object. A lot of people who do not know Patton know this Scrooge.
Campbell Scott and the other children have had to share a myth that is all jaw and policy. Friends from the last decades describe a man who could be tender in a kitchen and impossible in a rehearsal. He did not become a toastmaster. He became a problem who could still hold a close-up.
The later years
Home, after the flag, was California — Westlake Village, a house that did not require a meat parade — and whatever stage would still have him on his terms. He did not do the circuit of faded generals. He chose. He had already, in 1974, directed and starred in The Savage Is Loose, a survival picture he believed in more than the distributors did. Movie Movie (1978) let him be funny in two registers, a double feature inside one picture. Hardcore (1979), for Paul Schrader, made him Jake VanDorn, a Midwestern Calvinist father walking into the pornography business to find a daughter, a picture that is all jaw and grief. The Changeling (1980) put him in a haunted Seattle house. Taps (1981) put him in a military academy opposite Timothy Hutton and a very young Tom Cruise, a dying-school picture that used the Patton weather without asking him to put the helmet back on. He directed stage productions he treated as the real job — Death of a Salesman, Present Laughter, the classics he had never stopped thinking were the parish. The movies were a living. The theater was the work.
Television became a second civic object. In 1971 he had already done The Price, an Arthur Miller play, and refused an Emmy the way he had refused the Oscar. He was persuaded, in time, to accept television awards when the work itself was the point. In 1984 he played Ebenezer Scrooge in Clive Donner’s A Christmas Carol, a CBS film a certain kind of household still runs in December. It is not a cameo. It is a full miser, cold and then thawed, a performance people who never saw Patton can quote. Mussolini: The Untold Story (1985) put him in another uniform. The Last Days of Patton (1986) asked him to finish the general the flag had started. He took it. He did not pretend it was 1970. In 1990 he played a lawyer in The Exorcist III. In 1996 he played Juror No. 3 in a 12 Angry Men remake and won an Emmy. He was sixty-eight. The growl still worked. He had not mellowed. He had thinned the calendar.
He kept the marriage to Van Devere. He kept the bottle in the file; friends and interviewers did not sand it. He kept teaching younger actors by being impossible and then suddenly precise. In the 1990s he played a fading industrialist in Malice (1993) and took the television films a classical actor of his age is offered when the features thin: Inherit the Wind (1999) opposite Jack Lemmon, a last courtroom, a last growl. He died on September 22, 1999, in Westlake Village, of a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm. He was seventy-one. The statue stayed at the Academy. He had never picked it up. Westlake Village was the last address. Wise is the first. The flag clip kept doing the job without him. That was the joke he intended.
The last house was a California suburb, not a monument. Van Devere was there. The sons had their own work. He had already refused the parade twice — Oscar, then Emmy — and then accepted a television statue when the work, not the night, was the point. He did not become a toastmaster of war movies. He became a man who could still hold a close-up in a jury room and still refuse the premise of a meat parade. Neighbors in Westlake knew a growl and a limp and a man who had been Patton. He knew a cemetery in Arlington and a county in Virginia. Both are the life.
What those last two decades actually were is a classical actor who had already won the argument and then went on working: a Scrooge, a juror, a few pictures, a stage, a house in California, a wife, sons who had to share the jaw. He did not do the meat parade in old age either. He did not become a toastmaster of war movies. He became a man who could still hold a close-up and still refuse the premise. The aneurysm ended the body. The policy outlived it.
Westlake Village was a suburb, not a shrine. He kept Van Devere. He kept the bottle in the file. He kept the stage when a classic would have him on his terms — Miller, Coward, the parish he had never left. He played Scrooge for a December audience that would never see the flag the way 1970 had. He played Juror No. 3 because a growl in a jury room is still a job. He played a last courtroom opposite Lemmon in Inherit the Wind in the year he died. Wise is the first room. Arlington is in the file. The statue is still at the Academy. The house was a kitchen, a limp, and a man who had already skipped the premise. That is the chapter. It is longer than the speech. It is quieter than the flag. It is his.
After he was gone
Every refusal of an award still owes him the sentence. Every Patton impersonator still fails the eyes. Kubrick’s general still gets quoted by people who should not be quoting him. The statue is still at the Academy. That is the joke he intended. Campbell Scott has had to be a son and an actor in the same weather. The December Scrooge still runs. The flag still opens the picture.
He came out of Wise, wore the uniform, taught, roared through a flag, refused the parade, married the weather, played a December miser, and died without picking up the bronze. If you only remember the flag, you have the clip. If you remember the policy, Dewhurst, the December Scrooge, and the meat parade, you have him.
The statue is still at the Academy. The December film still runs. The Hustler still teaches a gambler who does not blink. Dr. Strangelove still teaches a general who should not be quoted by civilians. 12 Angry Men still teaches a growl in a jury room. Campbell Scott has had to be a son and an actor in the same weather. Westlake Village was the last address. Wise was the first. Arlington is in the file. The refusal is the remainder. He meant it. He had already said so before the envelope arrived. The hockey game was not a bit. The statue stayed home. The growl did the living. A county in Virginia. A cemetery watch. A flag. A December miser. A kitchen in Westlake. That is the whole instrument. The parade was never the point.
Portrait: Unknown photographer · Public domain (publicity still) · via Wikimedia Commons