Zachary Scott

Biography

Born in Austin, Texas, he was of direct Greek descent, his real surname was Skotidis. His grandfather had been a very successful cattle rancher and Scott was a distant cousin of George Washington.

Scott intended to be a doctor like his father, Zachary Scott Sr. (1880–1964), but after attending the University of Texas at Austin for a while, he decided to switch to acting. He signed on as a cabin boy on a freighter that took him to England, where he acted in repertory theatre before returning to Austin. There he began act in local theater productions.

Alfred Lunt discovered Scott in Texas and convinced him to move to New York City, where he appeared on Broadway. He made his debut in a revival of Ah, Wilderness! in 1941 with a small role as a bartender. Three years later, Jack L. Warner saw him perform in Those Endearing Young Charms and afterwards signed him to appear in The Mask of Dimitrios.

Scott was cast the next year in Mildred Pierce and received much acclaim for his performance. In the film he portrays Joan Crawford's somewhat sleazy love interest, whose mysterious murder forms the basis of the plot. (In the novel on which the movie is based, the character is just as sleazy but is not killed.) In 1946 exhibitors voted Scott the third most promising "star of tomorrow".

During this period, Scott and his first wife Elaine socialized regularly with Angela Lansbury and her first husband, Richard Cromwell. Elaine Scott had met Zachary Scott back in Austin and she made a name for herself behind the scenes on Broadway as stage manager for the original production of Oklahoma!. The Scotts had one child together, Waverly Scott.

Zachary Scott enjoyed playing scoundrels, and the public enjoyed those portrayals, too. Scott went on to star in such movies as The Southerner, The Unfaithful, Cass Timberlane, Flamingo Road, Flaxy Martin, Guilty Bystander, Wings of Danger, and Shadow on the Wall, opposite Nancy Davis Reagan and Ann Sothern. He later starred in Luis Buñuel's The Young One (La Joven, 1960), Buñuel's second English language movie (the first being Adventures of Robinson Crusoe).

In 1950, Scott was involved in a rafting accident. Also during that year, he and Elaine divorced, and she later married writer John Steinbeck. Possibly as a result of these developments or due to a box-office slump, he succumbed to a depression which affected his acting for Warner Bros. The studio did not continue to promote his films, so he turned back to the stage and began to accept roles on television. From the early 1950s to 1965, Scott appeared on a variety of television series. In 1961, for example, he portrayed the part of White Eyes, a Native American Chief, in the episode "Incident Before Black Pass" on Rawhide. During this period, he remarried, and he and his second wife, actress Ruth Ford, had a child together (he also adopted her daughter from a previous marriage). He moved back to Austin, where he died from a brain tumor at the age of 51.

In 1968, Austin renamed its civic center Zachary Scott Theatre Center in memory of the city's native son. His family also endowed two chairs at the University of Texas's theatre department in his name. Two streets in the Austin area are named in his memory as well: one street at the old airport Mueller Redevelopment and the other one in unincorporated southeast Travis County. Scott has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.