[2] The Scott family remained in Jamesport until Martha was 13 years old, when they moved to Kansas City, Missouri, and eventually to Detroit, Michigan.

[3] 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.

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.

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.

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.

Scott was married twice, first to radio producer and announcer Carleton William Alsop from 1940 to 1946, and then to jazz pianist and composer Mel Powell from 1946 until his death in 1998.

[citation needed] According to her son, Scott never forgot about her childhood hometown, using the mental image of a Jamesport cemetery in preparation for her Oscar-nominated role in Our Town.