The Early Scene Where Scott Screams at Nancy Marchand

There's a scene fairly early on in The Hospital where George C. Scott's depressed, suicidal, impotent... but manly and raging and CARING doctor.. practically pins female hospital administrator Nancy Marchand against a wall and screams at her -- his snarling mouth mere inches from her face - about the incompetency of her nursing staff in screwing up the care of a patient until he died.

Interesting thoughts arise watching that scene today(2020.)

First of all Nancy Marchand famously played the aged, tired-out but still shrewish Mafia Grandma Livia Soprano in The Sopranos...and died in the role. But here she is roughly 30 years earlier playing middle-aged, bright, professional and caring enough. Indeed, Marchand had played SEVERAL upper scale professionals in her earlier career -- the Katherine Graham-like newspaper owner on "Lou Grant;" the Mayor of Los Angeles in the comedy "Naked Gun"(it was funny, but she played her political power straight.) And here, she is playing a hospital administrator who is smart enough to go toe to toe with raging George C. Scott.

Second of all, George C. Scott did The Hospital after winning (and refusing) the Best Actor Oscar for Patton in 1970 ..and he got nominated again for this in 1971. And he deserved it. And in both films, Scott demonstrated a scary penchant for articulating rage "straight from the gut" -- few actors could match Scott in full, snarling, out of control dudgeon. In Patton, he had demonstrated this when he yelled at the shellshocked med patient in a room full of wounded men, and then slapped him. Here, he generates the same scariness at...a hospital administrator?

I always think of this: George C. Scott was considered to play Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather. Imagine SCOTT yelling at Johnny Fontaine about his crying over his Hollywood travails and slapping him -- "You could act like a MAN!!" Brando kinda/sorta summoned up the rage, but Scott would have reduced Johnny Fontaine to a grease spot on the carpet. Oh, well, Brando was good in his own, different way.

And so: we have George C. Scott on his full-power, blows the walls off the theater rage tearing into hospital administrator Marchand(who just silently takes it much of the time, but tries to verbally fight back and only gets yelled at harder) and...well, at least Scott didn't slap her.

But the scene is very uncomfortable to watch today. A full grown man yelling...and yelling...AND YELLING ..right into the face of a woman. It seems like bullying. It seems like abuse. Its scary.

And yet -- given the nature of the man who wrote the raging speech for Scott(Paddy Chayefsky), the scene also says this: "If you want to be a woman in business or government playing on the same field as men, you BETTER be able to take being raged at, fought with, bullied."

Its a very interesting scene, I say. Then and now.