The latter consideration was not incidental to Scott, whose off-screen demeanour was more white shoe than cowhide
boot. He was one of the first actors to form his own production company, in the 1940s, when most stars were under
contract to major studios, and was thus one of the first to have a measure of control over his output and its
profits; he eventually amassed a fortune worth a reputed $100m, with holdings in real estate, gas, oil wells and
securities, and he had the accoutrements to match. “There was not one item about his place to suggest he’d ever
appeared in a western,” Hopper reported after interviewing Scott at his Burton A. Schutt-designed,
mid-century-modern-exemplifying home, which was emphatically not on the range but in the heart of Beverly Hills. She
added: “Randy, dressed in sports clothes, looked about as western as the Brooklyn Bridge.” Lee Marvin, meanwhile,
recalled Scott’s sitting on a film set, unimpeachably tailored, while his stunt man trundled by in a burning
stagecoach. “He didn’t even look up,” Marvin marvelled. “Just went on reading the Wall Street
Journal.”
If the Virginia-born Scott liked to cultivate an image of the well-bred, French-cuffed, patrician southern
gentleman-financier when out of his 10-gallon hat — he was reportedly the only actor accepted into the august
environs of the Los Angeles Country Club — there was one trait he shared with his hardscrabble heroes: a wary
reserve. “Frankly, I don’t like publicity,” he said in a 1961 interview. He always kept in mind a saying of the
Broadway impresario David Belasco: “He told his clients, ‘Never let yourself be seen in public unless they pay for
it’. To me, that makes sense.” Scott may have felt he’d already paid enough out of his own pocket after a prolonged
house-share with Cary Grant — 12 years on-and-off, spanning the mid thirties and forties, in a Santa Monica
beachfront property dubbed ‘Bachelor Hall’ — gave rise to rumours of a more-than-platonic relationship between the
pair. “He was my best friend,” Scott said when Grant died in November 1986 (Scott would follow three months later).
“And that’s all I have to say about that.”
Scott hailed from the kind of background where ‘imperturbable’ was regarded as the ultimate approbation, and
discretion was always the better part of valour. He was raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, the only son in a
family of six; his father, George, was an administrative engineer at a textile company, while his mother, Lucy, came
from the kind of wealth that propelled Scott into the best prep schools and, eventually, the University of North
Carolina, where he studied textile engineering with a view to entering his father’s firm. However, the idea of a
desk-bound life soon began to pall for the athletic, six-foot-two Scott, who excelled at football, swimming and
sailing, and who lied about his age in order to enlist in the military during world war I, during which he served in
France. On his return, he embarked on a California road trip with a friend, equipped with a letter of introduction
to the eccentric millionaire and studio head Howard Hughes, courtesy of a family connection, asking if they could
tour a backlot or two. Hughes went one better. “He suggested we work on a picture for a few days,” Scott later
recalled, “so we became extras in a saloon scene in a movie called Sharp Shooters.”
Read the full story in Issue 73 of The Rake - on newsstands now.
Available to buy immediately now on TheRake.com as single issue, 12 month subscription
or 24 month
subscription.
Subscribers, please allow up to 3 weeks to receive your magazine.
