The life and career of actor Zachary Scott, handsome star of stage and screen, were cut short by cancer on Oct. 3, 1965.

Zachary Thomson Scott, Jr. was born in Austin in 1914. The son of a surgeon was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps but never showed the slightest interest in medicine. He was drawn instead to drama and began appearing in plays while still in high school.

At the University of Texas, his local college, Zach Scott combined acting and athletics. He landed leading roles in several campus productions in addition to serving as president of the Curtain Club while at the same time running track.

Deciding to see the world, Zach dropped out of school and worked his way to Europe as a deckhand on a freighter. During an extended stay in London, he joined a repertory company and gained priceless experience on the English stage.

Zach came home in 1935 and on his twenty-first birthday married his college sweetheart Elaine Anderson, whose family also had money. The newlyweds lived in New York for a short spell but returned to Austin so the young husband could finish college.

Zach burned the candle at both ends, holding down two jobs – director of the Little Theater and drama teacher at St. Mary’s Academy – while carrying a full course load. After graduation in 1939, the couple pulled up stakes again for Manhattan with the blessing and financial backing of both sets of parents.

With his lean good looks, natural charisma and theatrical talent, Zach found plenty of work on Broadway. Elaine, on the other hand, could not get her foot in the door and eventually settled for a behind-the-scenes career in production.

None other than Jack Warner himself of Warner Brothers Studio discovered Zach in 1943. Due to the wartime shortage of matinee idols, the movie mogul immediately signed the 29-year-old Texan to a long-term contract and put him right to work.

As a mysterious international criminal in the suspense classic “The Mask of Dimitrios,” Zach held his own opposite screen veterans Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet. Nearly 75 years later, his first motion picture is between-the-wars intrigue at its best thanks to an outstanding cast and a superb story.

Zach followed this auspicious debut with what most critics and fans consider his finest performance. In “The Southerner,” the film version of Texan George Sessions Perry’s award-winning novel “Hold Autumn in Your Hand,” the rich kid proved he could really act with a convincing portrayal of a struggling sharecropper.

After just two movies, Zach looked like he was on the fast track to stardom. In the 1946 “stars of tomorrow” poll, he came in third ahead of Eve Arden, Yvonne De Carlo and Robert Mitchum. The reviewer for his hometown paper called him “Austin’s one contribution and perhaps Texas’ most distinguished gift to the motion picture industry.”

In the newcomer’s third feature released in 1946, he played Joan Crawford’s “rotter of a second husband” in “Mildred Pierce.” Zach turned in a credible performance but was overshadowed not only by the scene-stealing star but also by Eve Arden and Ann Blyth, both of whom received Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress.

In those days, an actor was studio property and did what he was told or else. When Humphrey Bogart balked at making the mediocre western “Stallion Rock” for another studio in 1947, Zach filled in for him on loan from Warner Brothers.

He seemed to get back in the groove as a poor youth willing to sacrifice anything and anybody for wealth and power in the rags-to-riches melodrama “Ruthless.” But that part and similar roles in pictures like “The Unfaithful” and “Cass Timberlane” typecast him as a cad, villain and all-around bad guy.

Zach’s 1949 reunion with Joan Crawford, another Texas native, should have given his career a boost, but “Flamingo Road” turned out to be his last major motion picture. It did not help that he shaved his trademark mustache and played a spineless deputy sheriff.

Elaine had stayed behind in New York when Zach went to Hollywood, and in 1950 they made the separation permanent. She wasted no time in marrying famous author John Steinbeck, and he later wed actress Ruth Ford.

Roles were fewer and farther between for Zach in the 1950s, and the quality of the movies steadily declined. He made his final film, a Jerry Lewis comedy, in 1962 and returned to his first love – the stage.

The Scotts were giving readings of William Faulkner’s works at the University of Mississippi in the winter of 1965, when Zach became seriously ill. The lifelong smoker was diagnosed with lung cancer, and the disease was destined for his brain. He spent his last weeks at the family home in Austin, where he died that October at age 51.

Seven years later, the Austin Community Theater needed money for a new stage. Zachary Scott’s sister made a six-figure contribution on condition the theater be renamed for her brother. She never imagined that, in keeping with the flippant familiarity so common in the state capital, it would someday be called “The Zach.”

Bartee’s three books (“Texas Depression-Era Desperadoes,” “Murder Most Texan” and “Texas Boomtowns: A History of Blood and Oil”) and his 10 column collections are available on his web site barteehaile.com