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For Scott, acting has always been an antidote to self-hatred. "It was the only avenue of escape I had from myself," he admits. "It's never been difficult to subjugate myself to a part because I don't like myself too well. Acting was, in every sense, my means of survival." In Scott's case, that is not fan-magazine hyperbole. When the mask is off and he is living his own life, Scott has often turned to savage punishment of himself and those around him. He has candidly called his heavy drinking "an addiction" and saloons, for their easy conviviality, "a very necessary part of my life." He has had his nose broken several times in barroom brawls. "This sort of thing happens to actors who have a reputation for being tough guys," he says in a defensive rationale. "There's always some guy who wants to take you apart. I'm not Marciano and I can't keep this stuff up all my life. I should stay out of barrooms, I suppose. But I happen to like them." He has also violently struck at least one woman in a rage, and twice he has injured himself by ramming his fist against a wall and a mirror. There is gentleness and mundaneness in Scott's life as well —he is now in a period of relative personal tranquillity—but the record leaves little doubt that when he draws on his experiences for his acting, he has considerable reserve.
Born in Wise, Va., and raised in Michigan, Scott spent much of his childhood "being terrified of my father." Scott's father, George D., was a coal mine surveyor when the Depression shut down most of the mines in the area. He moved his family to Pontiac, Mich., where, he brags, "I worked my ass off and the family never missed a meal. It was drive, drive, drive." Scott's mother Helen (called "Honey") was an elocutionist who gave public poetry readings and occasionally contributed verse to the local papers. She spent hours teaching her son how to read stories aloud. "I have very powerful memories of her," Scott says. "She was very good to us." She died of peritonitis when George was eight. Shortly afterward her son began getting into an uncommon number of violent childhood accidents.
"He never complained or cried," George's sister Helen recalls. "He broke his nose playing football; he cut his head open diving into somebody in a swimming pool; he was hit by a golf club and run over by a car." Says Scott: "With a couple of exceptions, I was completely unloved. I owe much of my being alive to my sister, who more or less raised me. We were abnormally close."
At 17, he joined the Marines for a four-year hitch. "I was very gung-ho. They sent me to Parris Island; then, right in the middle of my training, they dropped the Bomb and the war was over. I felt a little like General Patton —they stole my war." With 45 months left to serve, he was sent to language school, then eventually assigned to a desk in Washington, where he taught a correspondence course in creative writing. He also worked on the graves detail, where he learned that he really did not want the war they stole. "You can't look at that many widows in veils and hear that many taps without taking to drink. God, half of us were stoned out in Arlington every day."