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Charles "Chic" Sale (August 25, 1885, - November 7, 1936), was an American actor and vaudevillian. Named at birth Charles Partlow Sale, he was a son of Frank Orville and Lillie Belle (Partlow) Sale, and brother of writer, actress Virginia Sale-Wren.

Charles "Chic" Sale
Motion Picture News (1919)
Born	Charles Partlow Sale, (1885-08-25)August 25, 1885 Huron, South Dakota U.S.A.
Died	November 7, 1936(1936-11-07) (aged 51) Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
Occupation	Stage and Screen Actor-Comedian

In 1920, after a tour wherein he played "rural parts," he was engaged by Christie Studios on Gower Street in Los Angeles. According to Grace Kingsley in the Jan. 28 edition of the Los Angeles Times, page II11, "It now comes to light that Chic Sale, appearing at the Orpheum this week, will as soon as his present tour is finished, about the middle of next month, return to town in the Capacity of a Christie star. Mr. Sale's first photoplay will be a five-reeler, adapted from Irvin S. Cobb's 'The Smart Aleck,' after which he will be starred in other well-known stories suitable to his talents." The item goes on to mention that Charles Christie, business head of the Christie studio, entered into a contract with Exceptional Pictures to produce the Sale film, to be distributed through Robertson-Cole, and notes Sales' occasional appearances in the Ziegfeld Follies and the Shubert Winter Garden shows. The movie was eventually named "His Nibs," and co-starred Colleen Moore. Chic played many of the parts himself, the film being a spoof of the sort of "hick", backwater characterizations that were his specialty.

In 1929, inspired by a carpenter named 'Lem Putt' from his hometown of Urbana, Illinois, Sale wrote The Specialist, a play about an outhouse builder. Because copyright infringement was widespread in Vaudeville, Sale enlisted the aid of two newspapermen to adapt The Specialist into a book. This enjoyed great success, and Sale spent the next several months responding to fan mail.

Sale had a career in Hollywood, appearing in various comic roles until his death from pneumonia in 1936. In contrast to his comic roles, one of his loftier appearances came as President Abraham Lincoln in 1935. The Perfect Tribute^[1] was a short film dramatizing Lincoln's disappointment at the meagre reaction to his Gettysburg Address. He encounters a dying and blind soldier who, not knowing he is addressing the President himself, tells Lincoln how inspiring the speech was.

Although an obscure figure today, Sale was a well-known popular culture figure during the 1930s, and was often the subject of jokes by comedians like Groucho Marx, usually in reference to The Specialist. Chic is also mentioned as an aside late in the Marx Brothers film, Animal Crackers, in a conversation between Ravelli (Chico Marx) and Groucho's character, Captain Spaulding). For many years—even after his death--"Chic Sale" was used as a euphemism for an outhouse. He is known to have found this unflattering, calling it "a terrible thing to have happen."

The late comedian Soupy Sales (born Milton Supman) changed his stage name from Soupy Hines to Soupy Sales in honor of Sale.

Notes[link]

See also[link]

outhouse

External links[link]

• Charles 'Chic' Sale at the Internet Movie Database
• Page at the Outhouse Museum Wall of Fame
• Chic Sale and The Specialist
• Charles sale at Find A Grave

Jean Shepherd
Jean Shepherd at WOR
Born	(1921-07-26)July 26, 1921 Chicago, Illinois, USA
Died	October 16, 1999(1999-10-16) (aged 78) Sanibel Island, Florida, USA
Pen name	Shep (nickname), Frederick R. Ewing
Occupation	Writer, raconteur, radio host
Nationality	American
Genres	humor, satire
Spouse(s)	Leigh Brown (1977-1998) (her death) Lois Nettleton (1960-1967) (divorced) Joan Laverne Warner (1950-1957) (divorced)
Influenced Jerry Seinfeld, Keith Olbermann

Jean Parker Shepherd
Born	(1921-07-26)July 26, 1921 Chicago, Illinois
Died	October 16, 1999(1999-10-16) (aged 78) Sanibel Island, Florida
Allegiance	United States of America
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	1942 - 1944
Rank	Technician Fifth Grade (T/5)
Unit	Signal Corps
Other work	Raconteur, radio personality

Jean Parker Shepherd (July 26, 1921 – October 16, 1999) was an American raconteur, radio and TV personality, writer and actor who was often referred to by the nickname Shep.^[1]

With a career that spanned decades, Shepherd is best known to modern audiences^[2] for the film A Christmas Story (1983), which he narrated and co-scripted, based on his own semi-autobiographical stories.

Early life[link]

Born on the south side of Chicago, Illinois, Shepherd was raised in Hammond, Indiana, where he graduated from Hammond High School in 1939.^[2] The movie A Christmas Story is based on his days growing up in Hammond's southeast side neighborhood of Hessville. As a youth he worked briefly as a mail carrier in a steel mill and earned his Amateur Radio license, sometimes claiming he got it at 16, other times saying he was even younger. Shepherd was a lifelong White Sox fan.

During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps.^[2] Shepherd then had an extensive career in a variety of media.

Career[link]

Radio career[link]

Shepherd began his broadcast radio career on WSAI in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1948. From 1951 to 1953 he had a late-night broadcast on KYW in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after which he returned to Cincinnati for a show on WLW. After a stint on television (see below), he returned to radio. "Shep," as he was known, settled in at WOR radio New York City, New York on an overnight slot in 1956, where he delighted his fans^[3] by telling stories, reading poetry (especially the works of Robert W. Service), and organizing comedic listener stunts. The most famous^[4] of the last involved creating a hoax about a non-existent book, I, Libertine, by the equally non-existent 18th century author "Frederick R. Ewing", in 1956. During a discussion on how easy it was to manipulate the best seller lists, which at that time were based not only on sales but demand, Shepherd suggested that his listeners visit bookstores and ask for a copy of I, Libertine which led to booksellers attempting to purchase the book from their distributors. Fans of the show eventually took it further, planting references to the book and author so widely that demand for the book led to it being listed on The New York Times Best Seller list. Shepherd, Theodore Sturgeon and Betty Ballantine later wrote the actual book, with a cover painted by illustrator Frank Kelly Freas, published by Ballantine Books.^[5] Among his close friends in the late 1950s were Shel Silverstein and Herb Gardner. With them and actress Lois Nettleton, Shepherd performed in the revue he created, Look, Charlie. Later he was married to Nettleton for about six years.^[6]

When he was about to be released by WOR in 1956 for not being commercial, he did a commercial for Sweetheart Soap, not a sponsor, and was immediately fired. His listeners besieged WOR with complaints, and when Sweetheart offered to sponsor him he was reinstated. Eventually, he attracted more sponsors than he wanted—the commercials interrupted the flow of his monologues. Ex WOR engineer, Frank Cernese, adds: The commercials of that era were on "ETs"—phonograph records about 14" in diameter. Three large turntables were available to play them in sequence. However, Shepherd liked the engineer to look at him and listen when he told his stories. That left little time to load the turntables and cue the appropriate cuts. That's when he started complaining about "too many commercials"!.^{[citation needed]} He broadcast until he left WOR in 1977. His subsequent radio work consisted of only short segments on several other stations including crosstown WCBS. His final radio gig was the Sunday night radio show "Shepherd's Pie" on WBAI-FM in the mid-1990s, which consisted of his reading his stories uncut, uninterrupted and unabridged. The show was one of WBAI's most popular of the period.

In later life he publicly dismissed his days as a radio raconteur as unimportant, focusing more on his writing and movie work. This distressed his legions of fans who fondly remembered nights with Shepherd on WOR.^{[citation needed]} He once made such comments during an appearance on the Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder. This contrasts with his frequent criticisms of television during his radio programs.

In addition to his stories, his shows also contained, among other things, humorous anecdotes and general commentaries about the human condition, observations about life in New York, accounts of vacations in Maine and travels throughout the world. Among the most striking of his programs was his account of his participation in the March on Washington in August 1963, during which Dr. Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, and the program that aired on November 25, 1963—the day of President Kennedy's burial. However, his most scintillating programs remain his oftimes prophetic, bitingly humorous commentaries about ordinary life in America.

Throughout his radio career, he performed entirely without scripts. His friend and WOR colleague Barry Farber marveled at how he could talk so long with very little written down.^{[citation needed]} Yet during a radio interview, Shepherd once claimed that some shows took several weeks to prepare. On most of his Fourth of July broadcasts, however, he would read one of his most enduring and popular short stories, "Ludlow Kissel and the Dago Bomb that Struck Back," about a neighborhood drunk and his disastrous fireworks escapades. In the 1960s and 1970s, his WOR show ran from 11:15 pm to midnight, later changed to 10:15 pm to 11 pm, so his "Ludlow Kissel" reading was coincidentally timed to many New Jersey and New York local town fireworks displays, which would traditionally reach their climax at 10 pm. It was possible, on one of those July 4 nights, to park one's car on a hilltop and watch several different pyrotechnic displays, accompanied by Shepherd's masterful storytelling.

Print[link]

Shepherd wrote a series of humorous short stories about growing up in northwest Indiana and its steel towns, many of which were first told by him on his programs and then published in Playboy. The stories were later assembled into books titled In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories: and Other Disasters, The Ferrari in the Bedroom, and A Fistful of Fig Newtons. Some of those situations were incorporated into his movies and television fictional stories. He also wrote a column for the early Village Voice, a column for Car and Driver, numerous individual articles for diverse publications, including Mad Magazine ("The Night People vs. Creeping Meatballism", March/April 1957), and introductions for books such as The America of George Ade, American Snapshots, and the 1970 reprint of the 1929 Johnson Smith Catalogue.^[7][8]

When Eugene B. Bergmann's Excelsior, You Fathead! The Art and Enigma of Jean Shepherd was published in 2005, Publishers Weekly reviewed:

This prismatic portrait affirms Shepherd's position as one of the 20th century's great humorists. Railing against conformity, he forged a unique personal bond with his loyal listeners, who participated in his legendary literary prank by asking bookstores for the nonexistent novel I, Libertine (when publisher Ian Ballantine had Shepherd, author Theodore Sturgeon, and illustrator Frank Kelly Freas make the fake real, PW called it "the hoax that became a book"). Storyteller Shepherd's grand theme was life itself... Novelist Bergmann (Rio Amazonas) interviewed 32 people who knew Shepherd or were influenced by him and listened to hundreds of broadcast tapes, inserting transcripts of Shepherd's own words into a "biographical framework" of exhaustive research.^[9]

Television and films[link]

Early in his career, Shepherd had a television program in Cincinnati called Rear Bumper.^[2] He claimed that he was recommended to replace the resigning Steve Allen on NBC's Tonight Show. Shepherd was reportedly brought to New York City by NBC executives to prepare for the position, but they were contractually bound to first offer it to Jack Paar. The network was certain Paar would hold out for a role in prime time, but he accepted the late-night assignment. However, he did not assume the position permanently until Shepherd and Ernie Kovacs had co-hosted the show.

In 1960 he did a weekly television show on WOR in New York, but it did not last long. Between 1971 and 1994, Shepherd became a screenwriter of note, writing and producing numerous works for both television and cinema. He was the writer and narrator of the show Jean Shepherd's America, produced by Boston Public Television station WGBH in which he told his famous narratives, visited unusual locales, and interviewed local people of interest. He used a somewhat similar format for the New Jersey Network TV show Shepherd's Pie. On many of the Public TV shows he wrote, directed and edited entire shows.^{[citation needed]}

He also wrote and narrated many works, the most famous being the feature film A Christmas Story, which is now considered a holiday classic. In the film, Shepherd provides the voice of the adult Ralph Parker. He also has a cameo role playing a man in line at the department store waiting for Santa Claus. Much to Ralphie's chagrin, he points out to him that the end of the line is much further away.

Ten years later, Shepherd and director Bob Clark returned to the same working-class Cleveland neighborhood to film a sequel, It Runs In The Family (later known as My Summer Story) released by MGM in 1994, with an entirely different cast from the previous film. The PBS series American Playhouse aired a series of television movies based on Shepherd stories, also featuring the Parker family. These included Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss, The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters,^[10] and The Phantom of the Open Hearth.^[11]

Live performances and recordings[link]

On Saturday nights for several years, Shepherd broadcast his WOR radio program live from the Limelight Cafe in New York City's Greenwich Village, and he also performed at many colleges nationwide. His live shows were a perennial favorite^{[citation needed]} at Rutgers to wildly enthusiastic standing room only crowds, and Fairleigh Dickinson Universities. He performed at Princeton University annually for 30 years, until 1996. He performed before sold-out audiences at Carnegie Hall and Town Hall. He was also emcee for several important jazz concerts in the late 1950s. Shepherd improvised spoken word narration for the title track on jazz great Charles Mingus's 1957 album The Clown. Eight record albums of live and studio performances of Shepherd were released between 1955 and 1975. In 1994, Shepherd recorded the opening narration and the voice of the Audio-Animatronics "Father" character for the updated Carousel of Progress attraction at Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom, still heard today.

Music[link]

On some of his broadcasts he played parts of recordings of such novelty songs as "The Bear Missed the Train" (a parody of the Yiddish ballad "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen") and "The Sheik of Araby". Sometimes Shepherd would accompany the recordings by playing the Jew's harp, nose flute, or kazoo, and occasionally even by thumping his knuckles on his head.

The theme song of his show was "The Bahn Frei Polka" by Eduard Strauss. The particular version he used was a 1958 recording by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops.

Ham radio[link]

Shepherd held the ham radio call sign K2ORS. He was very active on ham radio until his death. When operating as an amateur, he was known to use his middle name, Parker.^{[citation needed]} He was listed in the Amateur Radio Callbook, and for a number of years, while married to Lois Nettleton, his address was 340 East 57th Street in New York City. His last residence in NYC was on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village, where he lived for many years. He is also credited as the voice for the ARRL's tape series Tune In the World with Ham Radio. This series of tapes helped many young people become ham radio operators.

Marriages, Children and Death[link]

Jean Shepherd was married four times. A brief first marriage, about which virtually nothing is known, has been confirmed by Shepherd's son, Randall and by Shepherd's third wife, Lois Nettleton.

• Joan Laverne Warner: September 9, 1950–1957 (divorced)
  • Son: Randall Shepherd born 1951
  • Daughter: Adrien Shepherd born December 16, 1957.
• Lois Nettleton: December 3, 1960–1967 (divorced)^[12]
• Leigh Brown: March 2, 1977 – July 16, 1998 (her death)

Shepherd spent his final years in relative seclusion on Sanibel Island, Florida, with his wife Leigh Brown. She was also his producer at WOR, and played many roles in his varied career. As Shepherd attained a rotund figure in his later years, Leigh would refer to him as "ma pamplemousse," or, "my grapefruit." He died on Sanibel Island in 1999 of "natural causes."

Fact and fiction[link]

It is unknown to what extent Shepherd's radio and published stories were fact, fiction or a combination of the two. The childhood friends included in many of his stories were people he claimed to have invented, yet high school yearbooks confirm that many of them did exist. His father was a cashier at the Borden Milk Company. Shepherd always referred to him as "my old man." During an interview on the Long John Nebel Show—an all-night radio program that ran on WOR starting at midnight—Shepherd once claimed that his real father was a cartoonist along the lines of Herblock, and that he inherited his skills at line drawings. This may well have not been true but Shepherd's ink drawings do adorn some of his published writings, and a number of previously unknown ones were sold on eBay from his former wife Lois Nettleton's collection after her death in 2008.

The 1930 Federal Census Record for Hammond, Indiana indicates that Jean's father did work for a dairy company. His actual occupation reads "cashier." The 1930 census record (which misspells the last name as "Shephard" when searching) lists the following family members: Jean Shepherd, age 30, head; Anna Shepherd, age 30, wife; Jean Shepherd, Jr, age 8, son; and Randall Shepherd, age 6, son. According to this record, Jean Sr, Anna, Jean Jr, and Randall were all born in Illinois. Jean, Sr's parents were born in Kansas. Ann's parents were born in Germany.

Jean Shepherd had two children, a son Randall and a daughter Adrien, but publicly denied this. Randall Shepherd describes his father as having frequently come home late or not at all. Randall had almost no contact with him after his parents' divorce.^[13]

Legacy[link]

Shepherd's life and multimedia career are examined in the 2005 book Excelsior, You Fathead! The Art and Enigma of Jean Shepherd by Eugene B. Bergmann (ISBN 0-55783-600-0).

Shepherd's oral narrative style was a precursor to that used by Spalding Gray and Garrison Keillor. Marshall McLuhan in Understanding Media wrote that Shepherd "regards radio as a new medium for a new kind of novel that he writes nightly." In the "Seinfeld Season 6" DVD set, commenting on the episode titled "The Gymnast" Jerry Seinfeld says "He really formed my entire comedic sensibility—I learned how to do comedy from Jean Shepherd." Furthermore, the first name of Seinfeld's third child is "Shepherd."

Shepherd was an influence on Bill Griffith's Zippy comic strip as Griffith noted in his strip for January 9, 2000. Griffith explained, "The inspiration—just plucking random memories from my childhood, as I'm wont to do in my Sunday strip (also a way to expand beyond Zippy)--and Shep was a big part of them".^[14]

In an interview with New York magazine, Steely Dan's Donald Fagen says that the figure from his solo album "Nightfly" was based on Jean Shepherd.

Though he primarily spent his radio career playing music, New York Top 40 DJ legend Dan Ingram has acknowledged Shepherd's style as an influence.

An article he wrote for the March–April 1957 issue of MAD Magazine, "The Night People vs Creeping Meatballism", described the differences between what he considered to be "day people" (conformists) and "night people" (non-conformists). In the opening credits of John Cassavetes' 1959 film Shadows the credits read "Presented by Jean Shepherd's Night People".

In 2005, Shepherd was posthumously inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame. In Hammond, IN the Community Center is named after him.

Watch[link]

• Jean Shepherd in Clinton, New Jersey, in 1977.
• Jean Shepherd in Boston's Fenway Park discussing his childhood vis-a-vis baseball, October 14, 1969

Listen to[link]

• Jean Shepherd's radio shows from the 50s, 60s and 70s at archive.org
• [1] The Jean Shepherd Show rebroadcasts are also heard every Sunday night at 11:00 pm/Eastern on WXRB (95.1 FM/Dudley-Webster, MA).
• The Brass Figlagee Nightly podcast of Jean Shepherd shows.
• Jean Shepherd Reads Poems of Robert Service (1975) at Smithsonian Folkways
• Insomnia Theater Free 24 x 7 stream of Jean Shepherd shows.
• Shep-A-Day What was Jean Shepherd talking about on this day in history? Podcast updated daily.
• Shepherd describes how his father personally lost a White Sox game

The voice of the father in Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress.

Bibliography[link]

• I, Libertine (1956, co-written by Theodore Sturgeon as "Frederick R. Ewing")
• The America of George Ade (1960, edited and introduced by Jean Shepherd)
• In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash (1966)
• Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories: And Other Disasters (1971)
• The Ferrari in the Bedroom (1972)
• The Phantom of the Open Hearth (1978)
• A Fistful of Fig Newtons (1981)
• A Christmas Story (2003, posthumously)

Filmography[link]

• America, Inc. NET Playhouse (1970) (TV)
• Jean Shepherd's America (1971) (TV)
• No Whistles, Bells, or Bedlam (1972) (Rochester Institute of Technology) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307234/
• The Phantom of the Open Hearth (1976) (TV)
• The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters (1982) (TV)
• The Star-Crossed Romance of Josephine Cosnowski (1983) (TV)
• A Christmas Story (1983)
• The Great American Road-Racing Festival (1985) (TV)
• Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss (1988) (TV)
• My Summer Story (aka It Runs in the Family) (1994)

See also[link]

• WOR (AM)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Jean Shepherd at the Internet Movie Database
• Jean Shepherd Historical Preservation Website
• Jean Shepherd Festival in Hammond, Indiana
• The Night People vs Creeping Meatballism Mad 32 (March–April 1957) article by Jean Shepherd, illustrated by Wally Wood
• Jean's ham call on QRZ.COM
• Ralph Gardner's One Ralphie to Another
• Leigh Brown at the Internet Movie Database

Randolph Scott
in Follow the Fleet (1936)
Born	George Randolph Scott (1898-01-23)January 23, 1898 Orange County, Virginia, U.S.
Died	March 2, 1987(1987-03-02) (aged 89) Beverly Hills, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1928–62
Spouse	Marion DuPont (1936–39) (divorced) Patricia Stillman (1944–87) (his death) 2 children

Randolph Scott (January 23, 1898 – March 2, 1987) was an American film actor whose career spanned from 1928 to 1962. As a leading man for all but the first three years of his cinematic career, Scott appeared in a variety of genres, including social dramas, crime dramas, comedies, musicals (albeit in non-singing and non-dancing roles), adventure tales, war films, and even a few horror and fantasy films. However, his most enduring image is that of the tall-in-the-saddle Western hero. Out of his more than 100 film appearances more than 60 were in Westerns; thus, "of all the major stars whose name was associated with the Western, Scott most closely identified with it."^[1]

Scott's more than thirty years as a motion picture actor resulted in his working with many acclaimed screen directors, including Henry King, Rouben Mamoulian, Michael Curtiz, John Cromwell, King Vidor, Alan Dwan, Fritz Lang, and Sam Peckinpah. He also worked on multiple occasions with prominent directors: Henry Hathaway (8 times), Ray Enright (7), Edwin R. Marin (7), Andre DeToth (6), and most notably, his seven film collaborations with Budd Boetticher.

Scott also worked with a diverse array of cinematic leading ladies, from Shirley Temple and Irene Dunne to Mae West and Marlene Dietrich. He also appeared with Gene Tierney, Ann Sheridan, Maureen O'Hara, Nancy Carroll, Donna Reed, Gail Russell, Margaret Sullavan, Virginia Mayo, Bebe Daniels, Carole Lombard, and Joan Bennett.

Tall (6 ft 2.5 in; 189 cm), lanky, and handsome, Scott displayed an easygoing charm and courtly Southern drawl in his early films that helped offset his limitations as an actor, where he was frequently found to be stiff or "lumbering".^[2] As he matured, however, Scott's acting improved while his features became burnished and leathery, turning him into the ideal "strong, silent" type of stoic hero. The BFI Companion to the Western noted:

In his earlier Westerns ... the Scott persona is debonair, easy-going, graceful, though with the necessary hint of steel. As he matures into his fifties his roles change. Increasingly Scott becomes the man who has seen it all, who has suffered pain, loss, and hardship, and who has now achieved (but at what cost?) a stoic calm proof against vicissitude.^[1]

During the early 1950s, Scott was a consistent box-office draw. In the annual Motion Picture Herald Top Ten Polls, he ranked tenth in 1950, eighth in 1951, and again tenth in 1952.^[3] Scott also appeared in the Quigley's Top Ten Money Makers Poll from 1950 to 1953.^[4]

Biography[link]

Birth, family, and schooling[link]

His full name was George Randolph Scott. He was born in Orange County, Virginia, and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, the second of six children born to parents of Scottish-American descent. His father was George Grant Scott, born in Franklin, Virginia, an administrative engineer in a textile firm. His mother was Lucille Crane Scott, born in Luray, Virginia, a member of a wealthy North Carolina family.^[3] The Scott children in order of birth were: Margaret, Randolph, Katherine, Virginia, Joseph and Barbara, most born in North Carolina.^[5]

Because of his family's financial status, young Randolph was able to attend private schools such as Woodberry Forest School. From an early age, Scott developed and displayed an athletic trait, excelling in football, baseball, horse racing, and swimming.^[3]

World War I[link]

In April 1917 the United States entered World War I. Shortly afterwards, Scott, then 19 years old, joined the Army and served in France as an artillery observer with the 2nd Trench Mortar Battalion, 19th Field Artillery.^[3]

Scott's wartime experience would give him training that would be put to use in his later film career, including the use of firearms and horsemanship.

Post-war career[link]

After the Armistice brought the war to an end, Scott stayed in France and enrolled in an artillery officers' school. Although he eventually received a commission, Scott decided to return to America and thus journeyed home around 1919.^[3]

With his military career over, Scott continued his education at Georgia Tech where he set his sights on becoming an all-American football player. However a back injury prevented him from achieving this goal.^[6] Scott then transferred to the University of North Carolina, where he majored in textile engineering and manufacturing.^[3] As with his military career, however, he eventually dropped out of college and went to work as an accountant in the textile firm where his father was employed.^[7]

Stage and early film appearances[link]

Around 1927, Scott developed an interest in acting and decided to make his way to Los Angeles and seek a career in the motion picture industry. Fortunately, Scott's father had become acquainted with Howard Hughes and provided a letter of introduction for his son to present to the eccentric millionaire filmmaker.^[6] Hughes responded by getting Scott a small part in a George O'Brien film called Sharp Shooters (1928).^[8]

In the next few years, Scott continued working as an extra and bit player in several films, including Weary River (1929) with Richard Barthelmess and The Virginian (1929) with Gary Cooper. Reputedly, Scott also served as Cooper's dialect coach in this latter film.

On the advice of director Cecil B. DeMille, Scott also gained much-needed acting experience by performing in stage plays with the Pasadena Playhouse. Scott's stage roles during this period include:^[3]

• A minister in Gentlemen Be Seated
• A butler in Nellie, the Beautiful Model
• Metellus Cimber in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
• Hector Malone in George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman

In 1931 Scott played his first leading role (with Sally Blane) in Women Men Marry, a film, now apparently lost, that was made by a Poverty Row studio called Headline Pictures. He followed that movie with a supporting part in a Warner Bros. production starring George Arliss, A Successful Calamity.

In 1932 Scott appeared in a play at the Vine Street Theatre in Hollywood entitled Under a Virginia Moon. His performance in this play resulted in several offers for screen tests by the major movie studios.^[6] Scott eventually signed a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures at a salary of US$400 per week.^[3][9]

Paramount years[link]

Zane Grey apprenticeship[link]

Scott's first role under his new Paramount contract was a small supporting part in a comedy called Sky Bride (1932) starring Richard Arlen and Jack Oakie.

Following that, however, Paramount cast him as the lead in Heritage of the Desert (1932), his first significant starring role and also the one that established him as a Western hero. As with Women Men Marry, Sally Blane was his leading lady. The film was the first of ten "B" Western films that Scott made for Paramount in a series loosely based on the novels of Zane Grey.^[10] Henry Hathaway made his directorial debut with Heritage of the Desert; he would go on to direct a total of seven out of the ten Zane Grey adaptations that Scott would appear in.^[11]

Many of these Grey adaptations were remakes of earlier silent films. In an effort to save on production costs, Paramount utilized stock footage from the silent version and even hired some of the same actors, such as Raymond Hatton and Noah Beery, to repeat their roles. For the 1933 films The Thundering Herd and Man of the Forest, Scott's hair was darkened and he sported a trim moustache so that he could easily be matched to footage of Jack Holt, the star of the silent versions.^[12]

In his book The Hollywood Western, film historian William K. Everson refers to the Zane Grey series as being "uniformly good".^[13] He also writes:

To the Last Man was almost a model of its kind, an exceptionally strong story of feuding families in the post-Civil War era, with a cast worthy of an "A" feature, excellent direction by Henry Hathaway, and an unusual climactic fight between the villain (Jack LaRue) and the heroine (Esther Ralston, in an exceptionally appealing performance). Sunset Pass... was not only one of the best but also one of the most surprising in presenting Randolph Scott and Harry Carey as heavies.

The Zane Grey series were a boon for Scott, as they provided him with "an excellent training ground for both action and acting".^[14]

Non-Western roles for Paramount[link]

In between his work in the Zane Grey Western series, Paramount cast Scott in several non-Western roles, such as "the other man" in Hot Saturday (1932), with Nancy Carroll and Cary Grant; Hello, Everybody! (1933), an odd one-shot attempt to make a film star out of the popular but heavy-set radio singer Kate Smith; and Go West, Young Man (1936).

Paramount also cast Scott in two fairly good horror films: Murders in the Zoo (1933) with Lionel Atwill, and Supernatural (1933) with Carole Lombard. Paramount also loaned him to work at other studios, including Columbia, where he appeared with Bebe Daniels in a minor romantic comedy called Cocktail Hour (1933).

Star on the rise[link]

By 1935 Scott was firmly established as a popular movie star and, thus, following the release of Rocky Mountain Mystery (1935), Paramount moved him up from his "B" Western status to a star of "A" features, many on loan out.

Scott made four films for RKO Radio Pictures during 1935–36. Two of these were in the popular series of musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: Roberta (1935), also starring Irene Dunne, and Follow the Fleet (1936). In both of these films Scott played Astaire's lunkheaded but likable pal. The other two were among the best in Scott's career: Village Tale (1935), "a touching, still-obscure melodrama about small-town gossip and hypocrisy"^[3] directed by John Cromwell, and She (1935), a superb adventure-fantasy adapted from H. Rider Haggard's 1886 novel.

In 1936 Scott, on loan to independent producer [Edward Small] Edward Small, starred in another adventure classic, The Last of the Mohicans, adapted from the 1826 novel by James Fenimore Cooper. A big hit in its day, the film "gave Scott his first unqualified 'A' picture success as a lead."^[3]

Scott's films at Paramount include the aforementioned Go West, Young Man (1936), which reunited him with director Henry Hathaway and is Mae West's adaptation of Lawrence Riley's Broadway hit comedy Personal Appearance; So Red the Rose (1936), directed by King Vidor and starring Margaret Sullavan; and High, Wide, and Handsome. This last film, a musical directed by Rouben Mamoulian, featured Scott in his "most ambitious performance,"^[3] The film is …

… set in 1859 in Pennsylvania, and follows the exploits of oil prospector Scott as he struggles against various varmints and vested interests out to wreck his business, and tries to keep his marriage to Irene Dunne intact, despite the tempting presence of saloon singer Dorothy Lamour.^[1]

Heroes, heavies and "other" men[link]

In 1938 Scott finished his contract with Paramount and began freelancing. Some of the roles that he took over the next few years were supporting ones, while his other roles during the same time frame had him occasionally lapse into villainy. One missed opportunity also came about around this time. Due to his Southern background, Scott was considered for the role of Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind, but it was Leslie Howard who eventually got the part.

For 20th Century Fox Scott supported child star Shirley Temple in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938) and Susanna of the Mounties (1939). For the same studio he played a supporting role in his first Technicolor film, Jesse James (1939), a lavish highly romanticized account of the famous outlaw (Tyrone Power) and his brother Frank (Henry Fonda). Shortly after making this film, Scott portrayed Wyatt Earp in Frontier Marshal (1939) and, for Universal, starred with Kay Francis in When the Daltons Rode (1940).

Scott followed this by co-starring with Errol Flynn in Virginia City (1940) and played the "other man" role in the Irene Dunne–Cary Grant romantic comedy My Favorite Wife (1940).

In 1941 Scott returned to Zane Grey country by co-starring with Robert Young in the Technicolor production Western Union, directed by Fritz Lang. Scott played a "good bad man" in this film and gave one of his finest performances. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times wrote:

Randolph Scott, who is getting to look and act more and more like William S. Hart, herein shapes one of the truest and most appreciable characters of his career as the party's scout.^[15]

Also in 1941 Scott co-starred with a young Gene Tierney, in another western, Belle Starr. Scott's only role as a truly evil villain was in Universal's The Spoilers, a rip-roaring adaptation of Rex Beach's 1905 tale of the Alaskan gold rush co-starring Marlene Dietrich and John Wayne. The movie's climax featured Scott and Wayne (and their stunt doubles) in one of the most spectacular fistfights ever filmed. The Dietrich-Scott-Wayne combination worked so well that Universal recast the trio the following year in Pittsburgh, a war-time action-melodrama which had Wayne and Scott slugging it out once more.

In 1943 Scott starred in The Desperados, Columbia Pictures' first feature in Technicolor. The film was produced by Harry Joe Brown, with whom Scott would form a business partnership several years later.

World War II[link]

The real war[link]

Shortly after the United States entered World War II Scott attempted to obtain an officer's commission in the Marines but, due to his back injury from years earlier he was turned down.^[6] However, he did his part for the war effort by touring in a comedy act with Joe DeRita (who later became a member of The Three Stooges) for the Victory Committee showcases, and he also raised food for the government on a ranch that he owned.^[3]

In 1942 and 1943 Scott appeared in several war movies, notably To the Shores of Tripoli, Bombardier, the Canadian warship drama Corvette K-225, Gung Ho!, and China Sky.

Tall in the saddle[link]

In 1946, after playing roles that had him wandering in and out of the saddle for many years, including a role alongside Charles Laughton in the cheaply made production Captain Kidd (1945), Scott appeared in Abilene Town, a UA^[16] release which cast him in what would become one of his classic images, the fearless lawman cleaning up a lawless town. The film "cemented Scott's position as a cowboy hero"^[14] and from this point on all but two of his starring films would be Westerns. The Scott Westerns of the late 1940s would each be budgeted around US$1 million.^[17]

Scott renewed his acquaintance with producer Harry Joe Brown and together they began producing many of Scott's Westerns, including several that were shot in the two-color Cinecolor process. Their collaboration produced the superior Coroner Creek (1948) with Scott as a vengeance-driven cowpoke who "predates the Budd Boetticher/Burt Kennedy heroes by nearly a decade,"^[14] Gunfighters (1947) based on the Zane Grey novel Two Sombreros and The Walking Hills (1949), a modern-day tale of gold hunters.

Scott also made Westerns for Nat Holt. Some of these movies, Badman's Territory, Return of the Badmen, Trail Street, and Rage At Dawn were released by RKO, while others, like Fighting Man of the Plains, Canadian Pacific, and The Cariboo Trail were released by Twentieth Century Fox.^[18]

In the late 1940s and early 1950s Scott's films were made mainly for Columbia or Warner Bros. His salary for the latter studio was US$100,000 per picture.^[14][19]