George Randolph Scott
(January 23, 1898 – March 2, 1987)
This post kicks off The Blogathon For Randolph Scott, January 23-25.
Randolph Scott is my favorite actor, hands down — an opinion that seems to be shared by many who read this blog on an ongoing basis.
As a group, Scott’s Westerns were probably the biggest influence on my decision to take on this blog and book on 50s Westerns — they were certainly my “gateway drug” (beginning with 1958’s Buchanan Rides Alone).
And though he was just an actor playing fictitious characters in a number of medium-budget, 60-year-old cowboy movies, he became a model for the kind of man I want to be.
Scott started out as a somewhat stiff leading man. But he got better and better, and by the 50s, he’d aged into the ideal Western star. Tall, handsome, weathered, commanding, easygoing — and with a Southern drawl that really set him apart. (He made this Georgia kid feel a lot better about his own accent.)
Randolph Scott (from a 1949 newspaper interview): “I make Westerns because I like them. Westerns have been the mainstay of the movie industry ever since its beginning. And they have been good to me.”
Teaming with producers Nat Holt and Harry Joe Brown (separately) — and recruiting directors like Gordon Douglas, Edwin Marin, Andre de Toth and Budd Boetticher, Scott made modest, unpretentious films whose merits become more obvious with each passing year. The best of them are among the finest the genre’s ever seen. The lesser ones are worthwhile if only because Scott’s in them.
Retiring in 1960 after Comanche Station, Scott was persuaded to climb back into the saddle — to appear alongside Joel McCrea in Sam Peckinpah’s Ride The High Country (1962). And that was it. He passed away at 89, an extremely wealthy man thanks to shrewd investing of his movie money.
There are many stories of Scott sitting on Lone Pine locations reading The Wall Street Journal between takes. He saw the “pitcher bidniss” as just that, a business — and found a great deal of success in it. But the quality of the scripts — along with the many talented people he hired, encouraged and re-hired — proves he was paying attention to much more than just budgets and grosses. Movies this good, especially made on tight budgets and schedules, don’t just happen.
And speaking of all those movies, many of them will be covered throughout the weekend. Saddle up and read on.
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