George C. Scott’s small part in The Hanging Tree (1959), as a drunken faith healer made to look foolish by Gary Cooper, was an inconspicuous and perhaps inauspicious Hollywood debut. But in the roles he filled during the following 40 years, Scott would seldom play the fool again. In his next film, Anatomy of a Murder (1959), the unknown supporting actor threatened to steal the spotlight from the beloved star, Jimmy Stewart.
It was a respectable career from then through the end of his life, capably addressed in journalistic, one-thing-after-another prose by David Sheward in his biography, Rage and Glory: The Volatile Life of GeorgeC. Scott (published by Applause Books). Thoroughly researched through interviews and culling the newspaper morgues, Rage and Glory shows that Scott was as colorful off-stage as the characters he played on screen.
Any larger themes are lost amid the forest of details, yet Rage and Glory capably recounts the background to Scott’s film performances. Especially interesting is the chapter on his most significant and memorable role, Patton (1970).
The project had been in development for nearly 20 years before it opened in cinemas. One tough or at least gruff Hollywood actor after another had been slated for the part of the controversial and flamboyant general, including Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin and Rod Steiger. A character actor until fitted for the general’s boots, Scott was given a great opportunity and he seized it with zeal. In his hands a role that could have been one-dimensional—a tiresome John Wayne hero or a saber-rattling buffoon—became a complex, nuanced study of an unusual individual at war with the enemy and sometimes his own country.
