{"id":8456,"date":"2016-04-05T16:18:42","date_gmt":"2016-04-05T16:18:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=8456"},"modified":"2016-05-28T09:21:18","modified_gmt":"2016-05-28T09:21:18","slug":"memories-of-gregory-peck-born-100-years-ago-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=8456","title":{"rendered":"Memories of Gregory Peck, born 100 years ago today"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013 \u201cIt all goes by so quickly,\u201d Gregory Peck told me. \u201cIt\u2019s like a flash. Suddenly, one is in the home stretch and where did it all go? How did it flash by so fast?\u201d<\/p>\n

That was when the \u201cTo Kill a Mockingbird\u201d Oscar-winner was aged 66. He was born 100 years ago today and he died on June 12, 2003. Among the hundreds of entertainment figures I have interviewed over the years, Peck (pictured above right with David Niven in “The Guns of Navarone”) is still the one who stands out, not least because we shared the same birthday nearly 30 years apart.<\/p>\n

I met him several times including two long interviews at his palatial Holmby Hills residence in Los Angeles and he was always gracious, engaged and illuminating.<\/p>\n

He was in virtual retirement when I first spent time with him in 1982 following an almost 40-year career at the top after he became a star in his second film, \u201cThe Keys of the Kingdom\u201d, in 1944. He immediately had a steady stream of hits including \u201cSpellbound\u201d (1944), \u201cDuel in the Sun\u201d (1946) and \u201cThe Macomber Affair\u201d (1947).<\/p>\n

Peck often made social issues part of his work, most famously as Atticus Finch, the stalwart Southern attorney who defends a black man accused of rape in \u201cTo Kill a Mockingbird\u201d (1962). In \u201cGentleman\u2019s Agreement\u201d (1947) it was anti-semitism, \u201cMan With a Million\u201d (1954) greed, \u201cThe Great Sinner\u201d addiction, \u201cThe Man in the Gray Flannel Suit\u201d (1956, with Jennifer Jones pictured below) social conformity, \u201cOn the Beach\u201d (1959) nuclear war, and \u201cCaptain Newman M.D.\u201d (1963) mental health.<\/p>\n

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He was a longtime member of the U.S. National Council of the Arts; he risked the blacklist when he signed a letter in opposition to the House Un-American Activities Committee witchhunt in the 1940s; President Lyndon B. Johnson gave him the Medal of Freedom; President Richard Nixon put him on his enemies list; he campaigned against the Vietnam War and nuclear weapons; supported gun control; and the Motion Picture Academy gave him the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.<\/p>\n

In short, as well as a great movie star Gregory Peck was a good citizen although he downplayed that. \u201cI never thought about it,\u201d he told me. \u201cI just did things I was interested in doing. I don\u2019t think they made the world a better place. Maybe they haven\u2019t done any harm. I\u2019ve made movies that were said to have \u2018social significance\u2019 but there\u2019s no way of knowing the effect on the audience\u2019s thinking. Primarily, you set out to tell \u2019em a story and entertain them. If there\u2019s a residue in the form of a fresh light on social issues \u2013 a bit of illumination \u2013 that\u2019s the icing on the cake.<\/p>\n

Peck volunteered that he had made some flops in his time but he quoted his old friend, the late actress Ruth Gordon: \u201cShe said, \u2018Gregory, never discuss your failures. Why remind people?\u2019 You\u2019ve heard the old Sam Goldwyn line? \u2018If people won\u2019t go to the box office, you can\u2019t stop them.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He offered \u201cThe Snows of Kilimanjaro\u201d (1952), \u201cBehold a Pale Horse\u201d (1064) and \u201cThe Stalking Moon\u201d (1968) as movies that he thought were fatally flawed but he said audiences thought so too.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have to be very bright to recognise a well-done script when you read it,” he said. “But there were times when you spot flaws, some areas of the script where the tension let go or the interest lagged, and you think, well, we can fix this. We can do some clever rewriting and then with a certain clever way of playing the scene I\u2019ll disguise its shortcomings. I\u2019ll cover it with charm and the audience will never know it\u2019s a bad scene. But they do. All you do is make it less bad; you don\u2019t make it good.\u201d<\/p>\n

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He pointed to \u201cThe Macomber Affair\u201d (1947, with Joan Bennett and Robert Preston, pictured above), which he regarded as very nearly the best film of an Ernest Hemingway novel ever put on the screen except that the ending is flawed. In the story, a woman is allowed to go free after she murders her husband on safari but Hollywood\u2019s censors at the time, the Hays Office, objected.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to devise a compromise ending, which practically ruined what was a very faithful rendering full of Hemingway\u2019s irony, toughness and lack of sentimentality. But there are many things in the film that I think are excellent.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was fond of \u201cPork Chop Hill\u201d (1959), an uncompromising documentary-like war picture about a group of men who fight and die for a worthless hill in Korea. \u201cTo me, that is a good film but it did not have box office appeal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Peck allowed that he was miscast as F. Scott Fitzgerald in \u201cBeloved Infidel\u201d (1959) and the film as a whole was not very good \u201cbut there are scenes of his despair and drunkenness that I think are some of the best things I\u2019ve <\/i>ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over his long career, Peck also let some good roles get away. He turned down \u201cHigh Noon\u201d because he\u2019d just had a hit Western \u2013 \u201cThe Gunfighter\u201d (1950) \u2013 with a similar theme: \u201cGary Cooper was smart enough to take it and he did it beautifully. I probably couldn\u2019t have done it as well but it was a surefire role.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he rejected Frank Sinatra\u2019s hit, \u201cVon Ryan\u2019s Express\u201d because it came too soon after Peck\u2019s blockbuster \u201cThe Guns of Navarone\u201d. His consolation is that other stars also made mistakes. John Wayne turned down \u201cTwelve O\u2019Clock High\u201d (1949), a smash-hit war film for which Peck won the New York Critics\u2019 best actor award.<\/p>\n

Peck made no apology for making films that were pure escapism. He pointed out that in \u201cThe Guns of Navarone\u201d when he, David Niven, Anthony Quinn and the others are dressed in Nazi uniforms in occupied Greece during World War II running down a street chased by real Nazis \u201cif we turn right, you know they\u2019re going to turn left just like the Keystone Cops. They always do the wrong thing otherwise the picture\u2019s over. At any point, the film could have been 10-minutes long. It\u2019s more of a swashbuckler than a war picture. We knew what we were doing and it is on the verge of being tongue-in-cheek but it\u2019s legitimate entertainment with a background of high adventure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"omen<\/a><\/p>\n

He felt the same way about his hit horror film \u201cThe Omen\u201d (1976) as he felt the script was so well-calculated that he was sure it would be popular although the scale of its popularity surprised him: \u201cAll the business about 666 and the devil, I thought that was all nonsense but Lee Remick and I (pictured above) make a good team and perhaps make the audience care about us as all these terrible things happen. We didn\u2019t believe any of it for a moment but it was pure entertainment of a very old form going back to the gothic novel and people sitting around a campfire seeing who can tell the scariest ghost story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peck was proud of \u201cTo Kill a Mockingbird\u201d and grateful for his Academy Award but he said: \u201cWhen I first started, I think I was nominated four times in about five years and I didn\u2019t win. I didn\u2019t particularly think that I should have. I mean, people like Laurence Olivier made \u2018Hamlet\u2019, Fredric March made \u2018The Best Years of Our Lives\u201d and Ray Milland made \u2018Lost Weekend\u2019. I sat there and was not at all disappointed and nor did I think I was robbed.\u201d<\/p>\n

After \u201cThe Keys of the Kigdom\u201d (1946), \u201cThe Yearling\u201d (1947), \u201cGentleman\u2019s Agreement\u201d (1948) and \u201cTwelve O\u2019Clock High\u201d (1950), he went 13 years without a nomination: \u201cThen along came \u2018Mockingbird\u2019 but I wouldn\u2019t have felt I was robbed then either. I mean, Jack Lemmon was up for \u2018Days of Wine and Roses\u201d and Peter O\u2019Toole was up for \u2018Lawrence of Arabia\u201d. But apparently it was my turn.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he was pleased that \u201cTo Kill a Mockingbird\u201d had taken on a life of its own: \u201cIt\u2019s played in junior high schools all over the country in their civics course; they read the book and watch the video and then they write essays about what the film meant to them. I have a bunch of them on my desk. That\u2019s rather nice. It goes on and it probably will for a while. It\u2019s probably not going to drop out of sight suddenly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peck did some TV in the Eighties \u2013 \u201cThe Blue and the Gray\u201d U.S. Civil War series and \u201cThe Scarlet and the Black\u201d war picture are worth watching \u2013 and he had one more big picture, \u201cOld Gringo\u201d (1989) opposite Jane Fonda, but he accepted that his career at the top was over.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always been play to me. I felt lucky to be paid for what I would do for nothing if I had another means of income. It was a good career. One tends to forget the difficult times, the struggles, the clashes of temperament, the futile attempts to make a good film out of a bad script. I\u2019ve been a very lucky individual because I\u2019ve had many times when I could not ask more from life.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was delighted that he was able to play his hero Abraham Lincoln onscreen even though it was a cameo in \u201cThe Blue and the Gray\u201d and he didn\u2019t claim it was a great performance.<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cIt\u2019s a good reminder to Americans of what kind of people preceded us and what they did for us; that it\u2019s worth preserving and that, if there are changes that have to be made to preserve it, then we\u2019d better get busy and make those changes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peck paused and laughed. \u201cI think I\u2019ve veered off into cracker-barrel philosophy. I think I\u2019ve spoken my own eulogy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 \u201cIt all goes by so quickly,\u201d Gregory Peck told me. \u201cIt\u2019s like a flash. Suddenly, one is in the home stretch and where did it all go? How did it flash by so fast?\u201d That … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1263,2257],"tags":[4290,4291,4296,4289,2365,1847,4292,4293,4295,4294],"class_list":["post-8456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-memory-lane","category-recalling","tag-the-guns-of-navarone","tag-the-man-in-the-gray-flannel-suit","tag-the-omen","tag-to-kill-a-mockingbird","tag-david-niven","tag-gregory-peck","tag-jennifer-jones","tag-joan-bennett","tag-lee-remick","tag-robert-preston"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8456"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8509,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8456\/revisions\/8509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}