Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • Page 160

although she does say it's a different experience than working for any other director. Usually, she says, auditions include sitting down and talking about what she's done an interview. "But Woody isn't comfortable meeting people." She said that the first time she applied for work in one of his films, the casting director told her not to be alarmed if he doesn't say anything. What he said was, simply, There's a part you might be nice for." He is notorious for shooting movies in a different way just shooting and shooting, going off on tangents, departing from the script Actors love him and are frustrated by him. They love to be in the in-crowd; it's prestigious to be in a Woody Allen film.

On the other hand, their parts are often cut brutally, and sometimes out of the picture entirely. When "Everybody Says I Love You" came out Woody Allen asked Scotty, "How did you like the movie?" Scotty replied, "I liked it when I got used to the fact that I wasn't in it very much." Allen replied, "Oh, that I had to cut out six musical numbers." One movie in which Scotty is in every scene is a little gem called "Lunch Date," a film made as a graduate project at New York University by Adam Davidson. "Lunch Date" won an Oscar for best short film in 1992 it is a touching tale about how people perceive each other. Scotty was in the audience at the Oscars, and she watched as excerpts were shown. She actually got more screen time on national TV that night than the winner of the Best Actress award.

Connecticut having flown in from California. Here, in front of the fireplace, overlooking the river, is where Scotty talked about filling her bucket "Sometimes Dan and I sit out on the deck in summer and we say to each other, "Do you know how lucky we The stage is wonderful and if what she does for a living. "New York is exciting and it's pressure. Everybody is coiled. This her home in Essex is everything else.

New York is the part of my life that makes the rest of my life worthwhile. Because of my work, I'm a better wife, mother, and things fall in my proper place. I'm not overdoing the wife part, or the gardener part I have my own special world." Two special worlds, really professional and personal, and the rarest of balances in a profession known for instability and insecurity. About his mother, Andrew Bloch (a teacher, coach and actor) chimed in, "She has had a chance to have lunch all over the world, play great roles, earn the respect of an entire industry, and still get her leeks up come harvest time." The strong partnership of Dan and Scotty Bloch began a half century ago when she was doing summer stock "You Can't Take It With You" in Arden, Dan's hometown in Delaware. Dan saw the dress rehearsal and, as Scotty says, "We've been together ever since." And they will be together this summer, with their sons (the other is Anthony, a graphic designer in New York) and their daughters-in-law.

They will all go to Tuscany, as Scotty and Dan celebrate 50 years of marriage. Odd, perhaps, that an actor who knows such domestic bliss would become a favorite of Woody Allen, who would cast her in his chronicles of domestic disaster. But she feels at home in Allen's pictures, by "a sexiness in a middle-age lady that I don't think I have ever seen." I was going to say something about Scotty's eyes which is safer ground for me. She has blue eyes that light in surprise and curiosity. She has a crisp and lilting voice that you can hear in the back row without putting those theater earphones around your head.

She has a presence that reminds you how the stage can make characters and issues come alive. The nuns saw the talent first Back in New Rochelle, they saw it when Scotty was 5 years old and still called Maybelle. They needed somebody in the school to go out in front of the curtain to make an announcement and they said, "How about Maybelle? She's good." And so it began. It is hard to say in any successful person's life when the crucial dose of self-esteem arrived, when she learned her calling. But not in this case.

Maybelle Scott knew early on this was her strength. This is what I do. This is what I'm good at" No guessing. She has always loved the stage, even more than films for the chemistry of the acting, for the opportunity afforded a woman with evocative lines to deliver. On stage, "You're live at that moment" she said, when asked to elaborate on the compelling nature of the theater.

"No two performances are alike. There's a moment that happens when you are very involved. You can pause, in the middle of your lines you can hear the proverbial pin drop, you have the audience in your hands." It is, she says, an enormous feeling of power. On the day I visited Essex, Scotty had a full house. Her husband Dan, her biggest fan, was there, between trips to Europe and South America on coffee consultations (he is an expert on processing coffee beans and he also sells equipment).

One of their two sons, Andrew, was there, too, with his wife Maribeth and 17-month old Nathan, who were spending a few days in an. 13, New York City, Primary Stages theater, 45th Street near 9th Avenue, the first preview of "Scotland Road," by Jeffrey Hatcher, with Scotty Bloch in the role of Miss Kitue. This is not the Winter Garden or the Gershwin or the Continued on next page MA I Above, hard-bitten, disappointed, loving and cruel in "Die Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. At right, in "The Lion in Winter," which "I could spend my career doing. As the crazy neighbor in Tennessee Williams' last play, "A House Not Meant to Stand.

"It was a role the playwright wanted for himself. A Jewish grandmother in "Unexpected Tenderness..