Allen Radford

George Campbell Scott (1927-1999) was an American actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1970 for his performance as General Patton in the film *Patton*, but returned the award, stating that such awards created unfair competition among actors. He was born in Wise, Virginia in 1927 to Helena Agnes (1904-1935) and George Dewey Scott (1902-1988), who worked for the Buick company. While his youthful passion was literature, and he always dreamed of writing a novel, he never published any works. He served in the US Navy from 1945 to 1949. After his military service, he studied journalism at the University of Missouri, where he discovered acting. He achieved success on the stage in the 1950s. He received his first Oscar nomination for the film *Anatomy of a Murder*. His role as the anti-communist General Buck Turgidson in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film *Dr. Strangelove* earned him significant praise. His performance as General Patton in the 1970 film *Patton* won him both the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Actor, but he rejected the Oscar, stating he found the award system and the competition among actors absurd. He appeared in films such as *The Changeling* (1979) and *The Formula* (1980), and reprised his role as Patton in the 1986 television film *The Last Days of Patton*. In 1997, he appeared in a television remake of *12 Angry Men*. He died of an abdominal aortic aneurysm in Westlake Village, California in 1999 and is buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery. He was married to Carolyn Hughes (1951-1955), Patricia Reed (1955-1960), Colleen Dewhurst (1960-1965, 1967-1972), and Trish Van Devere (1972-1999). He had a daughter, Victoria (b. 1952), from his first marriage; two sons, Matthew (b. 1957) and Devon (b. 1958), from his second marriage; and two sons, Alexander (b. 1960) and Campbell Scott (b. 1961), from his marriage to Dewhurst. He also adopted his niece, George Dewey Scott III, and had an extramarital daughter, Michelle, born in 1954, with Karen Truesdell.