Wise County, Va., died Wednesday, Sept. 21, 1999 at his home north of Los Angeles, California. Scott was 71.While Scott was born in Wise, (Oct. 18, 1927), he was actually raised in Detroit. After high school he enlisted in the Marines and spent four years after WWII burying bodies at Arlington National Cemetery. He eventually enrolled in the University of Missouri's school of journalism. But he ended up in the performing arts.
``The minute I got onstage, I knew ... that this was what I wanted to do,'' he once told Life magazine. He left college in 1953 for the stage and debutted on Broadway in 1958 with Judith Anderson in Comes a Day. His film debut came in 1959 in The Hanging Tree, starring Gary Cooper. That year he also played a razor-sharp prosecuting attorney in Anatomy of a Murder, which brought him his first Oscar nomination.
Scott's credits were extensive, but he was perhaps best known for the movie Patton. Much of his work focused on TV.
In 1996, Scott starred in the National Actors Theater's Broadway revival of Inherit the Wind; he received rave reviews.
Scott never forgot southwest Virginia. He often brought television productions to the region to be filmed and created a scholarship at the University of Virginia-affiliated community college in Wise.
