Stage

Frank Craven, Martha Scott and John Craven in the original Broadway production of Our Town (1938)

Scott received a career boost right out of college, when she appeared with the Globe Theatre Troupe in a series of Shakespeare productions at the Century of Progress world's fair in Chicago in 1934.^[5] Following that, she moved to New York City, where she found steady work both in stock stage productions and radio dramas. In 1938, she made her Broadway debut in the original staging of Thornton Wilder's play Our Town as Emily Webb, the tragic young woman who dies in childbirth.^[6]

Film

Scott as Moses' mother, Yochabel, in The Ten Commandments (1956)

Two years later, Scott reprised the role of Emily in her film debut when Our Town was made into a movie. Her critically acclaimed performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

Scott found steady movie work for the next four decades, appearing in major epics such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, The Desperate Hours, and Airport 1975. Charlton Heston was a frequent co-star with Scott on both stage and screen. As she told an interviewer in 1988, "I played his mother twice and his wife twice. I was his mother in Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments. I was his wife on the stage in New York in Design for a Stained Glass Window and The Tumbler in London."^[6]

Producer

In 1968, Scott joined Henry Fonda and Robert Ryan in forming a theatrical production company called the Plumstead Playhouse.^[7] It later became the Plumstead Theatre Company and moved to Los Angeles. The company produced First Monday in October, both on stage and on film. Scott co-produced both versions. Her last production was Twelve Angry Men, which was performed at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Hollywood, California.

Television

Scott began appearing in TV roles in the medium's early days. On November 2, 1950, she starred in "The Cut Glass Bowl" on The Nash Airflyte Theater,^[8] followed by several guest appearances on Robert Montgomery Presents and other shows of television's "golden age", including two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. This pattern of guest roles continued through the 1960s with appearances on Route 66, Ironside, and The Courtship of Eddie's Father, among others. In the mid-1950s, Scott was the narrator for Modern Romances, an afternoon program on NBC-TV.^[9]

Scott was also a frequent TV guest star in the 1970s. She had recurring roles as Bob Newhart's mother on The Bob Newhart Show, the mother of Colonel Steve Austin (Lee Majors) on both The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, as well as Patricia Shepard, Sue Ellen and Kristin's mother on Dallas during its early years and later during the 1986 season. Scott was cast in single-episode guest appearances on several hit shows of the era, such as The Sandy Duncan Show, Columbo: Playback (1975), The Mod Squad, Marcus Welby, M.D., and The Love Boat. She played the role of Jennifer Talbot, Terri Brock's nasty grandmother, on General Hospital for six months (1986–1987), which ended when her character was murdered and stuffed in a drain pipe.

In the 1980s, she had a regular role on the short-lived series Secrets of Midland Heights and appeared in several television movies and in single episodes of shows such as Magnum, P.I., The Paper Chase, and Highway to Heaven. In the late 1980 she costarred with Jeffrey Lynn in an episode of Murder, She Wrote, which was a direct sequel to their 1949 feature film Strange Bargain. Scott's final acting role on television was in 1990 in the movie Daughter of the Streets.