Hollywood Bachelor—Scott Brady

Like being smitten with a shillelagh—that’s the way the fairer sex is reacting to Scott Brady, Universal-International’s popular new charmer. He has an expressive face, Scott, that speaks with deviltry and laughter, with integrity and strength. He’s tanned and husky, of, lifeguard proportions—and equally strong of. chin. He’s a breezy conversationalist, has a restless energy, and is just about as full-Irish as they come. On his parents’ side and their parents’ before them—“Anyway you look at us Tierneys, we’re Irish, I guess,” he grins.

In the charm department he’s old-fashioned—in a 1950 way. His is a sincere “just-leave-everything-to-me . . . I’ll-take-care-of-you, Doll” approach. “And with Scott you feel he is taking care of you,” says his favorite girl friend, Dorothy Malone. And she adds, “Scott makes any woman—be she girl friend, aunt, mother or grandmother, eight years old or eighty—feel cherished like a Queen Bee.”

He’s also a “William Saroyan kind of character”—devoted to the “little people” and ever ready to champion them. He acknowledges—and gratefully—his indebtedness to his family, his new profession, his country and his God. He readily admits “I hiss the Commies—and I cheer loud for the Star-Spangled Banner—and if that’s on the corny side—then so am I.” He’s deeply devoted to his mother “who raised three such big huskies,” and to his brother, Lawrence Tierney.

Born in Brooklyn, the son of Lawrence H. and Marian Tierney, Scott, for some bizarre reason nobody has figured out, was christened “Gerard.” In school he studied mostly to be a football coach and he was torn between this ambition and his secret yen to be a radio announcer “but my Brooklynese wasn’t too conducive to this.” He enlisted in the Navy at the age of eighteen, and when he got out of the Service—with the encouragement of Larry and a director friend, Jack Gage, who insisted he should be in pictures—Scott enrolled at the Bliss-Hayden little theater on the G.I. bill. He had only three weeks left of the nine months’ course and was considering switching to something else, when he was cast in the comedy hit, “Heaven Can Wait.” Larry, who was out of town and returned just in time to catch Scott before the play closed, sat beside their mother and kept repeating proudly aloud, “I knew he could do it.”

A domesticated bachelor of many arts, Scott lives without ostentation in a single apartment in Beverly Hills, sans maid service, for which he pays $95 rent—“which is about $90 too much—such a dreary place—but I got stuck with it.” The management at first wanted to give him an apartment with a hot plate instead of a kitchen, “but I wouldn’t go for it. I like to cook.” In his little kitchen Scott is somewhat of a whiz (he admits modestly) when it comes to frying chicken, tossing salads, and plying his guests with the real “specialties of the house—candlelight and wine.” He will admit, however, when pressured, that there’s small opportunity of his living in any Sheiky style, due to his immense informal drop-in trade. “Might as well be living at Hollywood and Vine,” he observes mischievously. “I keep telling my friends that I’m a big fat movie actor now, but seemingly they cannot accept that fact. They never ring before they come. Just knock on the door and there they are,’ he grins. Let him plan a dinner for a few friends complete with candlelight “and my folks show—unfortunately. So I just throw more steaks on the fire and we all sit down together family-style.”

When he isn’t working, Scott’s time for arising “depends on the previous evening—otherwise at ten a.m.” He rustles his coffee and what-have-you in his little kitchen, and takes off for the beach to swim and tan “and get in line for the volley ball game.” Thence to Terry Hunt’s Health Club, where he works out hours and steams—utilizing the steam room for shaving and pondering any problems on hand.

Occasionally Scott dines at Chasen’s or Romanoff’s—“but for the same dough I can eat like a king at home for a week,” he comments. Usually he takes his date to the “Encore Room” where he can hear Matt Dennis play “and get dinner for two and a cocktail and still get out for eight bucks.” The “Strip” night clubs he shrugs off with, “I’ve kind of outgrown that phase. If you’ve been there once—you’ve been there.”

Because of his dislike for any phony show, his casualness, simplicity, and independence of thought—Scott is “the poor man’s Bing Crosby” to his pals. They appreciate him for remaining so un-actorish; for still getting a bigger kick out of yarning about the old days in the little theater than about his improved status as a motion picture star.

Ever frank and unafraid, Scott will stand up to anybody for that which he believes—no matter how impressive the opponent or how plushy the locale. He himself admits. “I’m always putting my foot into it—and that’s saying a lot—at size 12½.”

“Scott stands pat for what he thinks—even when it could hurt him,” says Dorothy Malone. “And that I admire.”

Scott’s first meeting with Dorothy was strictly American-1950 . . . on a public beach at Santa Monica with Scott under the impression she was a waitress in a drive-in. Nor did she know Scott’s real identity. After the first contrived opening he started making conversation with her. Whereupon he launched into a glowing account of the glamorous lives of those in the motion picture profession. Not that he himself was lucky enough to be in it—but he knew some movie people and they were exciting and great fun, he went on—giving himself a subtle build-up all the way.

Dorothy listened, seemingly wide-eyed, and accepted Scott’s invitation to have dinner with him that evening—provided a girl friend of hers could go along. Remembering that her own Ford convertible might look too elegant for a waitress, when Dorothy left she picked out an old beat-up car on the beach—and sat there as long as Scott watched. Dorothy teasingly insists that it was Scott who broke first. “When he arrived to take us to dinner—he had all his clippings along.”

Questioned on his preferences concerning the fairer sex, Scott admits he likes a girl “who commands your respect and with whom you know from the first you’re going to have to watch your P’s and Q’s.” He likes a girl “preferably pretty.” one who “gives straight answers, likes football games and enjoys swimming, and has an enlarged sense of humor. If she took me seriously—it would be pretty tragic,” he says. He admits a regard for the scrubbed cotton look. “There’s something about a peasant skirt and blouse I like. Something so fresh and clean. To me nothing is ‘sexier’ than cleanliness.”

Matrimony? “Not yet,” says Scott. “At twenty-five a man isn’t really mature. Besides, I wouldn’t know what to do with a wife,” he adds, “and what do you do. with a girl around the house—take her along with you to the gymnasium?”

Besides, Scott and Larry are sharing the family’s financial responsibilities. “I’d. like to get Mother set up in a place of her own,” Scott says. “It’s about time she took it easy. Those G.I. loans are a good deal. You can get a $7,500 loan now with twenty-five years to pay. I’ll be fifty by then and can drop dead. We can hold a housewarming with a paid-for ‘wake.’ ”

Warm even a “wake” would be—with Scott around. With his love for laughter he would haunt it just to make sure the party, particularly his own, didn’t die.

THE END

—BY MAXINE ARNOLD

 

It is a quote. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 1950