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George C. Scott: Hustler
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Scott himself was anything but. He seldom even played losers, as Mel Gussow noted in the New York Times obituary on Friday, two days after Scott's death of a burst abdominal aortic aneurysm at the age of 71. In "The Hustler," he carved out a formidable space in a superb ensemble that included Jackie Gleason as Fats, Paul Newman as Eddie and Piper Laurie as Sarah, Eddie's doomed lover (Bert Gordon's chief victim). When the director, Robert Rossen, cast Scott in 1960, the actor had developed a reputation on the New York stage for his fierce originality. He'd ... won an Oscar nomination for a supporting role in his second movie: the slick prosecutor from the city who tries to best folksy lawyer Jimmy Stewart in Otto Preminger's "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959).
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Scott began in the theater, but from the beginning and throughout his career, he divided his acting choices between stage, film, and television. One of his early roles in film that brought acclaim was as gambler/manager Bert Gordon opposite Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, and Piper Laurie in The Hustler (1961), where he brought just the right blend of menace, cruelty, and charm to the morality tale of an eager pool player. His roles necessarily changed as he aged. He moved from playing a divorced father (Archie Bollen) with young children in Petulia (1968) to a father (Jake Van Dorn) with a runaway daughter in Hardcore (1979) to a grandfather (Ivan) with an adult daughter and grandson in Angus (1995). Even in the short-lived 1994 television series Traps he played Joseph Trapcheck, the grandfather of three generations of police detectives.
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Scott brought something novel to the screen: an electric wariness. No actor was better at portraying the point where thought and instinct fuse -- and he did it best in "The Hustler" (racking up another supporting-actor nomination). If you saw it as a teenager, his image embodied everything murky and menacing in city life. He was the nightmare image of the man in the back room. Bert Gordon knows things -- in his own twisted way, he teaches Eddie that character, not talent, perfects pool players. And he owns things -- a new car each year, and a hefty portion of the winnings of each man he bankrolls.
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George and Oscar wouldn't actually become the best of friends. In fact, he felt the whole process forced actors to become stars and that the ceremony was little more than a "meat market." In 1962 he was nominated again for Best Supporting Actor, this time opposite Paul Newman in The Hustler (1961), but sent a message saying "No, thanks" and basically refused the nomination.
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