George C Scott: The actor who hated movies so much he turned down an Oscar
Winning an Oscar is something most people in the movie business dream of, even if they don’t like admitting they do. After all, being honoured by your peers for your work is validation for all the effort and sacrifices made in forging a career, and you also get to attend a glitzy ceremony surrounded by the best and brightest of Hollywood. What’s not to like, you may ask? Well, according to an actor who was nominated for the biggest prize in the game in 1971, he didn’t like anything about the Academy Awards. In fact, he hated moviemaking so much in general that he actually declined the award, which sent Tinseltown into a frenzy.
In 1970, the epic war biopic Patton took Hollywood by storm. It introduced audiences to the work of a young screenwriter who would go on to become one of the most acclaimed directors of all time (Francis Ford Coppola), featured an opening monologue in front of a giant American flag that became genuinely iconic, and gave one of the industry’s finest character actors a showcase role that he grabbed with both hands. In fact, George C Scott was so incredible as World War II General George S Patton that it was widely described as a tour de force.
Naturally, when it came time for Oscar nominations, the notoriously volatile Scott was at the top of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences list. He had previously been nominated in the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ category for 1960’s The Hustler, and had tried to withdraw from the race, but this time he would be vying for the big one: ‘Best Actor.’ Surely no actor would turn down that honour?
Imagine the Academy’s surprise, then, when Scott sent the organisation a telegram stating that he intended to reject a nomination for the movie. He claimed he didn’t believe in the notion that actors should compete with each other, and he therefore had little time for the Oscars ceremony, which he elsewhere dubbed “a two-hour meat parade, a public display with contrived suspense for economic reasons.” Don’t sugarcoat it, George; tell us how you truly feel.
This was surprising enough for the Academy, but Scott went even further by declaring he didn’t just object to movie actors being nominated for awards; he had a profound, abiding distaste for the entire medium of film as a whole. “Film is not an actor’s medium,” he raged to Time magazine. “You shoot scenes in order of convenience, not the way they come in the script, and that’s detrimental to a fully developed performance.”
“There’s the terrible tedium and boredom involved in waiting around for the camera to be set up,” Scott continued, “and then you have to turn on and off when they do the scene over again. When you see the rushes is the first time you begin to judge your performance. If you get 50% of what you hoped for, you’re lucky.” Indeed, to Scott, movies were little more than a necessary evil in sustaining a career as a working actor, whereas his true love was theatre.
In the lead-up to the 43rd Academy Awards on April 15, 1971, actors and journalists alike debated Scott’s stance and theorised about whether he would show up to the ceremony to receive his award. Gregory Peck was notably critical of Scott poo-pooing Hollywood’s biggest night, while fellow ‘Best Actor’ nominee Ryan O’Neal backed him as a man of conviction. His Patton co-star Karl Malden also said he understood why Scott felt so strongly, but conceded that he could have been more tactful in how he worded his rejection.
Ultimately, when Goldie Hawn presented ‘Best Actor’ and opened the envelope to exclaim, “Oh, my God, the winner is George C Scott!” the man himself wasn’t in the building. Instead, he was tucked up in bed at his New York State farm with his family. Hilariously, when he was asked the very next day on the set of The Hospital about not turning up to retrieve his Little Gold Man, he shrugged and declared he had “no feeling about it one way or another.”
