Tony Scott was born Herman Gross Scott III September 23, 1923, in San Bernardino County California. He served in World War II, seeing combat in France and Germany; he was part of the reconnaissance squad tht discovered the Ohrdruf concentration camp, the first Nazi camp liberated by American forces. After the war he was assigned to the U.S. embassy in Paris, where befriended Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas; Stein referred to Scott as "her lost GI". Stein and Toklas introduced him to Thornton Wilder. Scott kept a long correspondence with both Toklas and Wilder until their deaths. As a young man he attended Pasadena Junior College; when he returned to the US after the War Scott graduated from Pomona College in 1947, where he was a member of Nu Alpha Phi fraternity. Scott was a writer by avocation and profession. He wrote several novels and plays early in his career; he was the TV critic for the Daily Variety newspaper in Los Angeles for more than 30 years and retired in 1997. He passed away June 2009.