Richard Scott

b. Paducah, Kentucky, 05/01/1878 – d. Paducah, Kentucky, 09/10/1952). Actor, singer. Richard Irvin Scott, the son of a wholesale hardware merchant, was born in Paducah in McCracken County, Kentucky and returned there after he retired from the stage. By all accounts he had a good singing voice and was a popular performer in his hometown before he turned professional. For some time he was a member of Shakespearean actor Louis James’s touring company, appearing in everything from Peer Gynt to Henry VIII. In December 1911 he opened with Otis Skinner in Kismet at the Knickerbocker Theatre in New York and stayed with him for three years. He toured the United States with various stock and vaudeville companies, appearing in plays ranging from Life (1914) at the Manhattan Opera House to The Woman Who Paid (1916) at Poli’s Theatre, in Washington. He is also said to have acted in films with actress Nance O'Neil at the Fox Film Corporation.

Like Edward Donnelly and Florence Roberts, he was a member of J.C. Williamson’s American Dramatic Company that travelled to South Africa in March 1917 and appeared at the Opera House in Cape Town in August of that year, performing in such plays as Kick In and The Easiest Way. In 1919/20 he acted in Sweet County Kerry, The Burglar and the Lady and Tom Moore for the Allen Doone Company at the Standard Theatre in Johannesburg, appearing with the likes of J.B. Rowe and Yvon Saxby. The following year he acted in Captain Kidd, Jr., Hit the Trail Holliday and The Rebel. He arrived back in the United States in 1922, with his new passport application having indicated that he intended to return via the Far East. During his time in the Union he also played Adele Fillis’s uncle in the film The Vulture's Prey (1922), directed by Dick Cruikshanks and William Bowden, which was only released after he had left. There are no easily accessible records of his subsequent movements and though during the 1930s there were occasional announcements that a Richard Scott would act in certain films, he does not feature in subsequent cast lists. He never married. (FO)

Sources

Stage and Cinema, 14 April 1917

S.A. Pictorial, 29 April 1922

Le Roux, André I. & Fourie, Lilla – Filmverlede: geskiedenis van die Suid-Afrikaanse speelfilm

McCracken County Public Library, Local and Family History

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