He had the manly good looks and rugged appeal to make it to top stardom
in Hollywood and succeeded quite well as a sturdy leading man of
standard action on film and TV. Born in Brooklyn on September 13, 1924,
Irish-American Scott Brady was christened Gerard Kenneth Tierney
(called Jerry) by parents Lawrence and Maria Tierney. His father, chief
of New York's aqueduct police force, had always had show business
intentions and later did print work after retiring from the force. Both
Scott's older and younger brothers,
Lawrence Tierney and
Edward Tierney went on to become actors
as well. Lawrence's promising film noir "bad guy" career was sabotaged
by a severe drinking disorder that led to numerous skirmishes with the
law. Scott himself faced a narcotics charge in 1957 (charges were
dropped, Scott maintained that he was framed) and later (1963) was
involved in illegal bookmaking activities. Fortunately, Scott was more
cool-headed and wound up avoiding the pitfalls that befell his older
brother, making a very lucrative living for himself in Hollywood
throughout the 1950s and early 1960s.
Scott grew up in Westchester County and attended Roosevelt and St.
Michael's High Schools. Like his older brother Lawrence, Scott he was
an all-round athlete in school and earned letters for basketball,
football and track and expressed early designs on becoming a football
coach or radio announcer. Instead he enlisted before graduating from
high school and served as a naval aviation mechanic overseas. During
his term of duty he earned a light heavyweight boxing medal. He was
discharged in 1946 and decided to head for Los Angeles where his older
brother Lawrence was making encouraging strides as an actor. Toiling in
menial jobs as a cabbie and day-time laborer, the handsome, blue-eyed
looker was noticed having lunch in a café by producer
Hal B. Wallis and offered a screen test.
The test did not fare well but, not giving up, he enrolled in the
Bliss-Hayden drama school under his G.I. Bill, studied acting, and
managed to rid himself of his thick Brooklyn accent.
He signed with a minor league studio, Eagle-Lion, and made his debut of
sorts in the poverty-row programmer
In This Corner (1948) utilizing
his boxing skills from his early days in the service. He showed more
promise with his second and third films
Canon City (1948) and
He Walked by Night (1948), the
latter as a detective who aids in nabbing psychotic killer
Richard Basehart. Scott switched over
to higher-grade action stories for Fox and Universal over time.
Westerns and crime stories would be his bread-winning genres with
The Gal Who Took the West (1949)
opposite
Yvonne De Carlo and
John Russell and
Undertow (1949), with Russell again,
being prime examples. He frequently switched from hero to heavy during
his peak years. In one film he would romance a
Jeanne Crain in
The Model and the Marriage Broker (1951)
or a
Mitzi Gaynor in
Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952),
while in the next beat
Shelley Winters
to a pulp in
Untamed Frontier (1952). A
favorite pin-up hunk in his early years, he hit minor cult status as a
bad hombre, The Dancin' Kid, in the offbeat western
Johnny Guitar (1954). He and the
other manly men, however, were somewhat overshadowed in the movie by
the Freudian-tinged gunplay between
Joan Crawford and
Mercedes McCambridge. Other roles
had him sturdily handling the action scenes while giving the glance
over to such diverting female costars as
Barbara Stanwyck,
Mala Powers and
Anne Bancroft.
Scott would mark the same territory in TV -- westerns and crimers --
finding steadier work on the smaller screen into the 1960s. He starred
as the title hero in the western series
Shotgun Slade (1959). Stage too
was a sporadic source of income with such productions as "The Moon Is
Blue", "Detective Story" and "Picnic" under his belt before making his
Broadway bow as a slick card sharp opposite
Andy Griffith in the short-lived
musical "Destry Rides Again" in 1959. He later did the national company
of the heavyweight political drama "The Best Man" with his portrayal of
a senator.
The seemingly one-time confirmed bachelor decided to settle down after
meeting and marrying Mary Tirony in 1967 at age 43. Prior to this he
had been linked with such luminous beauties as
Gwen Verdon and
Dorothy Malone. The couple had two sons.
Parts dwindled down in size in later years and he gained considerable
weight as he grew older and balder, but he still appeared
here-and-there as an occasional character heavy or hard-ass cop in
less-important movies such as
Doctors' Wives (1971),
$ (1971),
The Loners (1972) and
Wicked, Wicked (1973). Minor TV
roles in mini-movies also came his way at a fair pace. Towards the end
he was seen in such high-profile big-screen movies as
The China Syndrome (1979) and
Gremlins (1984). Scott had a collapse in
1981 and was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive
respiratory disease. He later relied on an oxygen tank. He died of the
disease four years later and was interred at the Holy Cross Cemetery in
Culver City, California.