Alexander Scourby was born in Brooklyn on Nov. 13, 1913, son of Greek immigrants Constantine Scourby and Betsy (Patsakos) Scourby. His father was a successful restaurant owner and wholesale baker and an ill-advised investor in some motion picture failures. Scourby had two sisters, Lula and Mary. A brother, Nicholas, died.
Reared in Brooklyn, Scourby was a member of a Boy Scout troop here and later a cadet with the 101st National Guard Cavalry Regiment. He attended public and private schools in Brooklyn, spending his summer vacations in New Jersey, upstate New York, and at a cousin’s home in Mass-achusetts. After attending Polytechnic Prep School, he finished his secondary education at Brooklyn Manual Training High School, which he has described as “an ordinary high school that had an awful lot of shop.”
As an adolescent, Scourby, who was co-editor of a magazine and yearbook at Manual Training High School, envisioned a career in writing. But he came to realize, as he said, that writing was for him “absolutely the most painful thing in the world” and that he “could never meet a deadline,” whereas he found the reading aloud of plays easy and enjoyable. Encouraged by some of his teachers, he began to turn his attention to acting. He made his stage debut with the high school’s dramatic society, as the juvenile in Augustan MacHugh’s “The Meanest Man in the World.” He had a precise, mellifluous voice.
Operates Brooklyn
Pie Factory
When he graduated from high school in 1931, Scourby, not yet having abandoned the idea of a writing career, entered West Virginia University at Morgantown, West Virginia to study journalism. During his first semester at West Virginia, he joined the campus drama group and played a character role in A.A. Milne’s comedy “Mr. Pim Passes By.” In February 1932, as he was beginning his second semester, his father died, and he left the university to help run the family’s pie bakery in Brooklyn.
About a month after Scourby returned to Brooklyn, he was accepted as an apprentice at Eva Le Gallienne’s Civic Repertory Theatre on 14th Street in downtown Manhattan. At the Civic Repertory, he was taught dancing, speech, and make-up, and was given his first professional role, a walk-on in “Liliom.” In 1933 Scourby and other Civic Repertory apprentices joined together to form the Apprentice Theatre, which presented plays at the New School in Manhattan during the 1933-34 season.
Scourby was an asset to radio programming beginning in 1936 using the name Alexander Scott at first. At one time he played running roles in five different soap operas, including “Against the Storm.” He was regularly heard on “The Eternal Light” for 14 years. During World War II, he did broadcasts in Greek for the Office of War Information.
Records Many Books
For the Blind
Scourby’s successes on Broadway were many, including the role of Walt Whitman in “A Whitman Portrait” in 1966. Scourby’s performances on radio were many, including sci-fi, soap operas, commentary and drama programs. Scourby’s debut in film was in Affair in Trinidad in 1952. Other films include The Silver Chalice, Giant, Seven Thieves, The Big Fisherman, Man on a String, aka Confessions of a Counterspy and The Executioner. His role as the villain Mike Lagana in “The Big Heat” (1953) is considered by most critics as his finest screen performance. He was often as the villain in his movies.
In 1952, the year of his film debut, he narrated the 1952 classic TV documentary “Victory at Sea.” He also narrated the 1954 movie version of it. Also on television, Scourby acted in and narrated various dramatic programs, notably the specials “The World of Jacqueline Kennedy,” “The World of Bob Hope,” “The World of Sophia Loren,” “The World of Benny Goodman” and “The Death of the Hired Man.”
Alexander Scourby and Lori von Eltz were married on May 12, 1943. She was the daughter of the late motion picture actor Theodor von Eltz, and an actress known to television, Broadway and motion picture audiences as Lori March.
Scourby was 5-feet-1½ inches tall, and weighed about 167 pounds. His hair was grayish black and his eyes a bluish green. Scourby had no political affiliation, although he usually voted Democratic, and no religious affiliation, although he was baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church and married in the Episcopal Church. The wedding ceremony was repeated in the Orthodox rite to please his family.
Once an addict of the photographic darkroom, Scourby found most of his recreation on the grounds of his country house, cutting firewood, mowing the pasture and lawn, and plowing his garden.
Scourby recorded the entire King James Version of the Bible for the American Foundation for the Blind. It was a project that lasted four years; he finished it in 1944. When it was released to the general public in the 1960s, it became a bestseller. He went on to complete other popular Bible recordings in the 1970s.
At one time Scourby wrote: “I am very honored that God chose me as an instrument to narrate his eternal Word. I am awed by the realization that after I transcend this earthly realm to the heavenly, this beautiful recording will still be here to comfort and encourage all who will listen. I am also proud that I recorded the King James Version. Although many other versions of the Bible have been written, the King James Version is my favorite. It is still recognized by Bible scholars and academics as the most accurate and most beautiful rendition — and for the sheer beauty of the English language the King James version has no equal.”
Alexander Scourby died in Boston, on Feb. 22, 1985.
— Vernon Parker
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