Hall of Fame of Western Film & TV Stars
Randolph Scott

A handsome leading man and an all-time favorite, Randolph Scott enjoyed a long, successful motion picture career. His film career leads him through many phases including as a romantic leading man. However, he favored athletic roles in dozens of adventure film. He had reputation for being one of the outstanding reel Western heroes.

He was born in Orange City, Virginia on January 23, 1903 and raised in Charlotte, NC. He attended Georgia Tech and was injured playing football. He transferred to the University of North Carolina. He graduated with a degree in textile engineering and manufacturing. However, he discovered a love of acting.

He studied at the Pasadena Community Playhouse and had a chance meeting with millionaire and filmmaker Howard Hughes. He got some extra work at Fox. In 1929, he worked with Gary Cooper, to coach him in a Virginia dialect for the 1929 The Virginian. He also has an uncredited bit part in the movie. From his success, Paramount signed him to a contract.

It was during those lean years, while trying to get into movies, that he met another young hopeful named Archibald Leach. The shared a beach house known as Bachelor hall. Scott and his friend made the rounds of all the film studios until they were successful in getting their chances at fame and fortune. Years later, young Leach became famous as Cary Grant.

At Paramount, they gave him the chance to show what he could do in a series of Westerns based on the famous Zane Grey novels. These features had previously proved very successful when Jack Holt made the silent versions back in the Twenties. The studio was hopeful that Scott could rise to stardom by appearing in the same stories with sound. As things turned out, a new star was born, for Scott proved himself quite capable of handling the action in these top-notch features.

Through the years that followed, Paramount gave Scott a wide variety of roles ranging from straight drama to light comedy. He even managed to survive a list of romantic features, where the studio loaned him out to other companies for equally varied assignments. However, it was in Westerns that he was at his best and his producers slowly came to realize this through experience. Besides his work at Paramount, Scott made some very good pictures for 20^th Century Fox, Universal, Columbia and R-K-0, among which were two particularly fine action features, The Spoilers and Pittsburgh. Released by Universal, these films co-starred Scott with John Wayne and Marlene Dietrich and the highlights of each production were two of the greatest knockdown drag-out fights between Scott and Wayne.

His easy-going charm was not enough to suggest the success that would come later. He was a pleasant figure in comedies, dramas, and the occasional adventure. It was not until he began focusing on Westerns in the late Forties he reached his greatest stardom. His screen persona altered into that of a stoic, craggy, and uncompromising figure, a tough, hard-bitten man seemingly unconnected to the light comedy lead he had been in the Thirties.

With the 1951 Man in the Saddle, Scott worked almost exclusively in Western produced by his own company, Ranown. Veteran film producer Harry Joe Brown was his partner. Throughout the Fifties, this team produced many of the finest medium-budgeted Westerns ever made. Scott was still in top physical condition, but his face had become weary and weather-beaten. His physical features combined with his purposeful portrayal of a soft-spoken, laid-back, yet supremely self-reliant character. Scott’s Westerns reminded you of watching the old silent favorite of the screen, William S. Hart. They resembled each other and played their roles somewhat identically. Each was the strong, silent type of hero.

Scott’s final film was, perhaps, one of his greatest is the 1962 Ride the High Country. Sam Peckinpah directed the movie and teamed him with old friend and a fellow Western star Joel McCrea. The movie is a touching, mournful tale of aged gunfighters. For Scott, it was a totally fitting vehicle with which to end his screen career.

The bank hires aging ex-marshal Steve Judd (Joel McCrea) to transport a gold shipment through dangerous country. Judd hires his old partner, Gil Westrum (Scott), and Westrum’s protégé Heck (Ron Starr) to help. However, Steve doesn't know that Gil and Heck plan to steal the gold, with or without Steve's help. On the trail, the three get involved in a young woman’s desire to escape from her father, then from her fiancé and his dangerously psychotic brothers.