The Late Scott Wilson – This Time It’s Real

That's Robert Blake at left, Scott on the right

Scott Wilson  is dead. Admittedly, it’s hardly the first time he has died. In 1967, he was hanged in the courtyard of the Kansas State Penitentiary for having committed multiple brutal murders. In 2003 he suffered a different fate, at the hands of Florida serial killer Aileen Wuornos. And he was unlucky enough to get fatally mixed up with zombies in TV’s The Walking Dead. Wilson was of course an actor who emerged unscathed from all of his dealings with mortality in films like Monster and In Cold Blood. Now, alas, he has succumbed to leukemia for real, at age 76.

I met Scott Wilson when I was researching the films of 1967. I was thrilled to speak with him, because he’d appeared in two of the best, In the Heat of the Night (he played fugitive Harvey Oberst, who is cleared of a murder rap by Sidney Poitier’s detective Tibbs) and In Cold Blood. I think he was flattered to have the start of his career examined so closely. We sat in the dim, cozy living room of his West Hollywood duplex, sipping tea and munching cookies graciously served by his wife Heavenly, a lovely woman who fully measured up to her challenging name. As my tape recorder slowly turned, Scott reminisced about landing the role of Harvey, who starts out as a racist but ends up becoming a true believer in Mister Tibbs’ smarts.

It helped that he was a Southerner by birth, from Atlanta. When he discovered acting as a young man, he spent five years learning every aspect of the craft, never actually expecting to earn a living on stage or screen. Auditioning for the role of Harvey, he knew he’d have to do a lot of cross-country running: his character has committed a robbery and is fleeing through the Mississippi countryside to escape the long arm of the law.  Fortunately, he was then earning his keep as a valet parker, sprinting up Hollywood hills to retrieve the cars of restaurant patrons, and so he could handle the physical challenges of his part with ease.

Thanks to Poitier and Quincy Jones, Scott was encouraged to try out for the leading role of a feckless killer in the screen version of Truman Capote’s true-crime thriller, In Cold Blood. He physically resembled the real Dick Hickock (who committed the killings along with Perry Smith), and he possessed a hearty laugh that bubbled out of him at unexpected moments, lending an eerie quality to the most mundane conversations. I was spooked by that laugh, even in his comfortable living room, especially when he played me an audition tape (from the old stage chiller, Night Must Fall) that he used to nab the Hickock role.

Columbia Pictures originally wanted major stars to play the two young killers. But Scott explained that director Richard Brooks insisted on unknowns “so there would be nothing to blemish the audience’s reaction to the killers; they could identify with them as killers instead of actors.” This helped catapult a screen novice into a leading role, but it also had its downside: Brooks made little attempt to tout his unknowns, Scott and Robert Blake, as actors. Result: they missed out on award recognition they richly deserved. 

Still, Scott wasn’t in it for the accolades. He told me, “I didn’t aspire to walk the red carpets. I didn’t aspire to the accouterments of being an actor. It’s what surrounds being an actor. Once I found acting, I said, this is what I want to do. I was really never interested in being a star.”

Hail, and farewell.

Scott Wilson Finds a Career In the Heat of the Night

Scott Wilson, as Dick Hickock, is on the right

The other night, in the lobby of the Chinese Theatre, I was pleased to run into one of my favorite character actors, Scott Wilson. He was there as an honored guest of the TCM Classic Film Festival, which was screening In the Heat of the Night for its gala opening. About ten years ago, while researching the great movie year 1967, I had sat down in Scott’s comfy living room for what turned out to be a three-hour chat about his career. It started with a featured role in In the Heat of the Night, followed by a star-making turn as a real-life killer in one of 1967’s most powerful crime dramas, In Cold Blood. (One of his most memorable recent roles was as a victim – not a perp – in 2003’s Monster, where he ran afoul of Charlize Theron’s deadly Aileen Wuornos.) Though the biggest box-office hit that came out of 1967 was The Graduate, and critics applauded the bravura audacity of  Bonnie and Clyde, neither of those films was named Best Picture at the 1968 Oscar ceremony. That honor went to In the Heat of the Night, a tight little whodunit that fit the mood of the country in an era when civil rights were at the top of everyone’s mind.

The Atlanta-born Scott Wilson made his film debut as In The Heat of the Night’s Harvey Oberst, a small-town Southern punk. He’s first seen by Haskell Wexler’s dramatically hand-held camera desperately running away from the town of Sparta, Mississippi. When he’s finally caught just before the state line by Sheriff Gillespie (played with Oscar-winning flair by Rod Steiger), he discovers he’s the prime suspect in a murder case. Gillespie is only too happy to pin the rap on him. But Sidney Poitier, as a Philadelphia homicide expert who finds himself stuck in this backwater Southern town, quickly assesses the situation and announces that Harvey is innocent of the charge. He may have lifted the dead man’s wallet but he didn’t kill him, because the angle of the fatal blow indicates that it was caused by a right-handed assailant. And Harvey’s a lefty. 

Scott Wilson’s character, then, becomes the first in the film to acknowledge that a black man (not to mention a Yankee) is a great deal smarter and more capable than any of the locals. Through various plot twists, he eventually becomes an ally. In fact, Harvey’s evolution from hostility to appreciation for Poitier’s Virgil Tibbs foreshadows that of Sheriff Gillespie, who gradually moves from disdain to sincere gratitude for what Tibbs has contributed to the life of his town. 

If  Harvey Oberst has reason to appreciate Virgil Tibbs, Scott Wilson has all the more reason to appreciate the helping hand given him by Sidney Poitier. During filming, Poitier even went home one night and reworked an already strong scene between the two of them for maximum effect, then made sure director Norman Jewison was giving the young Scott some good close-ups. When Scott interviewed for the role of Dick Hickok in In Cold Blood, Poitier was one of those who approached director Richard Brooks on his behalf. (Jewison and film scorer Quincy Jones spoke up for him too.) Beyond that, Poitier took it upon himself to give the fledgling actor a pep talk, praising his talent and predicting a bright future. The result: “After he left I was like Godzilla, and I walked into that meeting with Brooks feeling very confident, having no self-doubt.” Soon thereafter, the part was his. Just one more way that Sidney Poitier made a difference in Hollywood’s film industry. 

My heartfelt thanks to Scott Wilson for his talent and his gifts as a raconteur. And to his wife Heavenly for her long-ago tea and cookies. 

Screen Tests and Testimonials: Garbo Smiles!

Not long ago, I was in the Motion Picture and Television reading room at the Library of Congress, visiting my books (what a thrill!), and getting expert advice on how to do research in this fabulous archive. The LOC, I learned, does not merely collect films and books about filmmaking. Its vast holdings include scripts, one-sheets, lobby cards, and a wide array of memorabilia. By way of illustration, reference librarian Josie Walters-Johnston pulled out a vintage scrapbook in which a movie buff from the 1930s had lovingly pasted photos of her screen idols. Greta Garbo was this fan’s special favorite, and her enigmatic beauty shown forth on almost every page.

Josie had also prepared a treat: she had cued up some rare footage of Garbo from the late Forties. In that era, Garbo’s great films (Anna Christie, Queen Christina, Camille, Ninotchka) were long behind her. She was attempting a comeback, and an Italian company was interested, but wanted to be sure of its investment. That’s why the legendary Swedish actress had to stoop to the indignity of a screen test. The soundtrack is lost, but I watched her (in a variety of outfits) silently emote for the camera, smiling, looking grave, turning her head in response to some director whose voice I couldn’t hear. As she moved through this humiliating exercise, a faint look of distaste seemed to flicker across her lovely features. A postscript: the financing fell through, and Garbo’s comeback was not to be.

Watching that brief film clip, I remembered an audition tape that had recently thrilled me to the marrow. I was interviewing Scott Wilson, widely regarded in Hollywood as an “actor’s actor.” Which means that he’s always been better known for losing himself in a role than for becoming a star. We were discussing the films of 1967, and Wilson pulled out a forty-year-old tape of himself auditioning for the role of Dick Hickock, one of the two feckless, ruthless killers at the heart of the screen adaptation of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. For his audition, the then-unknown Wilson chose to present Danny’s monologue from Night Must Fall, a thriller by playwright Emlyn Williams in which a charming drifter is gradually revealed to be a psychopath. Speaking quietly in a midwestern drawl rather than in Danny’s traditional Irish brogue, breaking into a chuckle at the oddest moments, Scott was both fascinating and terrifying. No wonder he got the part.

Scott Wilson’s audition for director Richard Brooks is a rare example of Hollywood at its kindest. When the casting process for In Cold Blood began, Scott was acting in his very first movie, In the Heat of the Night. As a small-town Southern kid arrested for a murder he didn’t commit, he played key scenes opposite the movie’s stars, Rod Steiger and Sidney Poitier. It was Poitier who first alerted him that the role of Dick Hickock might be a good fit. He and Quincy Jones ( who was to write memorable jazz scores for both films) personally lobbied Brooks on Scott’s behalf. Next, director Norman Jewison gave Brooks a peek at dailies from In the Heat of the Night to help validate Scott’s acting creds. Perhaps most valuable to Scott was the pep talk from Poitier just before his big moment: “After he left I was like Godzilla, and I walked into that meeting with Brooks feeling very confident, having no self-doubt.” And nailed the audition. How refreshing to hear about show people looking after one of their own.