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In "Winterset," Scott played the gangster character, Trock, and lived up to the rep he was building as a bar-crawler and a brawler who never brought his drinking to work -- but did bring his unsettling intensity. "George often used to come in to rehearsals a little late, with bandages, black eyes, and I would always hear that there was a woman involved. I was afraid of him: terrified. We didn't have any dialogue together -- my scenes were with Don Murray -- but George was always there, and I don't think I said one word to him. Then, in 1960, we met again. Rossen had already set me for 'The Hustler' and he asked me to go with him to meet George, who was then appearing in a play called 'The Wall.' George was very unhappy with it, I can't remember exactly why; he had done most of the run of the show with a broken arm, and there was a change of leading ladies -- he was still suffering from the experience when I talked about it with him recently. Anyway, we went backstage and took George to a bar around the corner."

Did Rossen think having Laurie there would reduce the tension, since she'd appeared with Scott in "Winterset"? "I don't know," Laurie laughed. "Maybe he was scared of George, too! I think he really wanted me to be there for company. Rossen and I were spending a lot of time together as friends back then, talking about the character and the movie. And George was known as an up-and-comer who was, somehow, dangerous."

Laurie and Rossen sat side by side, with George opposite, and as they drank their beers Laurie remembers thinking, "I had never been that close to him before; I was always on the other side of the room. And I don't think we said two words to each other that night! Then, when we started the movie weeks later, we never spoke to each other except when we did our scenes. I was still very uneasy with him -- and I decided not to worry about it because that was useful for my performance, and for the movie."

Since Scott was notorious for his derision of Method acting guru Lee Strasberg, I wondered if Laurie had been able to discern how he put himself completely into character. "I could never see the strings," she said, "nor was I looking for them. To me, making the movie, George and Bert were one person. When I dared to look him in the eye, it was Bert-George, George-Bert. In that scene at the party when I'm drunk and I come down the stairs and he whispers something in my ear and I get upset and throw champagne in his face. I don't know what he said to me; I couldn't hear anything except some kind of gibberish." Years later she and Scott talked about why that scene proved to be so potent: "We agreed that it wasn't important that I hear -- it was more important that, whatever he said, I played against what I imagined he said. We never discussed it at the time, but the intuition between us was powerful, and we used it to get at that part of myself." The talented group on "The Hustler" didn't think they were making movie history: "There wasn't an intellectual awareness, at least on my part. We just enjoyed each other and felt connected and productive and worked very hard."

Scott was one of the first actors of his generation to make negative emotions like anger and disdain charismatic, even sexy. "He wasn't afraid to get to those parts of himself," says Laurie, "and for men back then that was especially rare. Young actors had a fear of self-exposure. Now a lot of young actors aren't so afraid to show their emotions -- but, unfortunately, a lot of them don't have good judgment or taste. George trusted the flash of genius or originality that he had." Not too long ago, Scott told Laurie a story about a line reading that set audiences bristling when "The Hustler" premiered in 1961. It comes when Newman's Eddie avenges Laurie's Sarah and salvages his own pride by whipping Minnesota Fats his way, not Bert's. Scott breaks Bert's usual knowing glare and roars out to Eddie, "YOU OWE ME MONEY!" As Laurie recalls, "George had a big argument with Rossen about that; Rossen did not think that was the right reading. He wanted a more conventional 'You owe me money.' But George insisted on doing it his way, and he did."

Laurie surmises that his choice not to appear at the Oscars or accept his award for "Patton" may have cemented his reputation for difficulty (though it didn't stop the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from nominating him for best actor afterward, for "The Hospital"). "It was an unheard-of gesture; on the one hand, people respected that decision in the deepest kind of way, but they also didn't understand it, and it may have added to the impression that George was a person they couldn't handle." But she thinks the main reason the huge roles dried up for him in movies was that "he didn't have that thing that some of us just don't have -- of being commercially clever about a career and hiring powerful people to work it out. He did have some awfully good parts after 'Patton,' but not great parts; mostly, he was good in them. You need youth, and powerful people looking out for you constantly."

Laurie "didn't set eyes on him" for almost three decades after "The Hustler," but when she did, in 1990, Scott gave her an enormous bear hug and picked her up in the air. He had given up drinking; the personality that Laurie now got to know was "caring, warm, funny and charming." Several years later, she played the early-Alzheimer's wife to his retired police chief in a short-lived TV series called "Traps," filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia. "He was fun to work with, and we laughed; I was flattered that he wanted me to play with him." By the time he played Matthew Harrison Brady and she played Mrs. Brady in this year's TV production of "Inherit the Wind," "We were kind of like old marrieds. We didn't have to talk, yet I was comfortable saying anything I wanted to. I knew he could be nasty and sharp, but he never was to me. Maybe he could let his gentleness out with people when he knew they wouldn't mean him any harm."
salon.com | Sept. 30, 1999

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