She gave nicely understated performances in her next few films: as Jane Peyton Howard in Frank Lloyd's historical The Howards of Virginia (1940), opposite Cary Grant the dedicated school teacher in Tay Garnett's Cheers for Miss Bishop (1941) in which she aged convincingly from 17 to 85 and as a devoted wife to preacher Frederic March in Irving Rapper's warm family drama One Foot in Heaven (1941).
Scott received an Academy Award nomination for best actress and was immediately hailed as the year's new female discovery. Her stage success brought her to Hollywood, where she continued her role in Sam Wood's film adaptation of Out Town (1940). When the play opened on Broadway in February 1938, Scott received glowing reviews in the pivotal role of Emily, the wistful girl-next-door in Grovers Corners, New Hampshire, who marries her high school sweetheart, dies in pregnancy and gets to relive a single day back on Earth. She went to New York soon after and found work in radio and stock before playing making her breakthrough as Emily Webb in Our Town.
She majored in drama at the University of Michigan and after graduation, she joined The Globe Theatre Troupe, a stock company that performed truncated Shakespeare at the Chicago World's Fair in between 1933-34. Martha Ellen Scott was born in Jamesport, Missouri on September 24, 1914, and raised in Kansas City, where a high school teacher encouraged her interest in acting. Martha Scott, the actress who originated the role of Emily Webb in the stage and film versions of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize winning Our Town died on May 28 at a hospital in Van Nuys, California due to natural causes.