Talking about Gregory Peck is talking about one of the most charismatic, beloved and respected actors in classic Hollywood. His height, talent, sensitivity and humanism stood out in a career with more than fifty titles, some as unforgettable as his liberal lawyer Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), with which he won his only Oscar.
Twenty years after his death, on June 12, 2003, TCM dedicates a documentary to him: Gregory Peck, the great actor, in which he traces the personal and artistic career of an upright and honest man through his own words. and the testimonies of one of his children, Carey Peck, that of Sean Hepburn Ferrer, son of his great friend Audrey Hepburn, and his biographer Michel Senna.
“An actor can only bring his own life experience to the role,” he said. That is why he believed it was important to travel and “meet people of different social statuses.” Peck advocated having “a life full of adventure.” And he had it. Born on April 5, 1916, Eldred Gregory Peck’s childhood was spent in the Californian town of La Jolla. His parents divorced when he was only 5 years old and he was left in charge of his maternal grandmother for a while, Kate Ayres, a movie lover who took him once a week to see a movie.
His father wanted him to study medicine and at the age of 20 he went to the University of Berkley. But scalpels weren’t his thing and he was bored, so he joined the rowing club, where he was the star of the girls. He took his first steps in the theater at the university and there he found his vocation. With the approval of his parents, he took the train to New York. He was 1939 and he was 23 years old.
At the Neighborhood Playhouse he played Molière, Strindberg and George Bernard Shaw. And choreographer Martha Graham helped her learn to move on stage. During the performance of the play The Doctor’s Dilemma he met the Finnish hairdresser Greta Kukkonen and on December 8, 1941 she proposed to him. They had three children: Jonathan, Stephen, and Carey.
His thing was the theater and interpreting the classics. His son Carey comments on camera what he wrote in one of the letters Gregory Peck sent to his father: “I will never lower myself to go to Hollywood or work in the movies because I belong to the highest art.” He assured that the cinema did not attract his attention. But it was really difficult to live only on stage performances. In 1942 he made his Broadway debut and a year later he was already in Hollywood shooting his first film, Glory Days, directed by Jacques Tourneur, a film that narrates the Soviet resistance against Nazi Germany in World War II. The tape was not very successful and he was not satisfied.
With the second everything changed. In The Keys of the Kingdom he was a priest and offered a serious and honest image that would be very recurring in his career. His work earned him an Oscar nomination, parties in Hollywood and an upcoming film directed by Hitchcock. Remember (1945) paired him with Ingrid Bergman, with whom there were rumors of a romance. Peck loved making the film, but with the master of suspense there wasn’t much of a connection, as he wasn’t close with the actors and Peck liked to make suggestions to directors. Twenty years later, Hitchcock’s friend Truffaut criticized the actor’s performance: “He doesn’t have many good scenes.” With the British he would coincide again in the judicial drama The Paradine process.
In his following films he improved his technique and managed to transmit confidence and humanity to his characters. He also shot alongside filmmakers such as William Wyler, Raoul Walsh and Robert Mulligan, who directed him in To Kill a Mockingbird, the film in which he played the favorite character of his entire career, the lawyer who defends a black man accused of raping to a white woman. With Vincente Minnelli he filmed My Distrustful Wife, with King Vidor The Merciless Avenger, with Elia Kazan The Invisible Barrier and with Henry King The Gunslinger.
However, he did not run away from the most unpleasant characters. She gave life to the macho from Duelo al sol, inspired by a womanizing cousin; In Yellow Sky he was a violent man and already in his more mature days he played the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele in The Children of Brazil (1978) where he orders the execution of a child without blinking an eye.
His good time professionally coincided with the collapse of his marriage. The documentary recalls the chemistry that existed between him and the French journalist Veronique Passani, who interviewed him for Roman Holidays (William Wyler, 1953). She became his second wife and the mother of his children Anthony and Cecilia. “My father was very ambitious. He wanted to be a great actor, but also a good person. My mother did not share his vision and they grew apart,” says Cary Peck.
And Sean Hepburn recalls how well the actor behaved with his mother, a debuting actress in the film and who ended up winning the Oscar. “Gregory thought my mother’s performance was incredible and wanted her name to be featured alongside his, even though she was already an established star. They became very close.” Gregory Peck, the great actor reviews the political and social commitments of the American, a man of principles who united against Senator McCarthy’s Witch Hunt, raised funds against cancer and fought for literacy. His duty was to make movies about important issues because he wanted to be a good citizen.
His career stagnated until he was seventy and in 1975 he suffered what he would call “the tragedy of my life”, the suicide of his son Jonathan at the age of thirty. He would return to the big screen a year later in the horror film The Prophecy, by Richard Donner. He played Abraham Lincoln in the Blues and Grays series and at the age of 82 he played Father Mapple in Moby Dick with a famous seven-minute speech that he made in one take.
“Luck only comes to you when you start,” he is heard saying in the documentary. “It’s harder to get to the top and stay there,” she continues. Something he tenaciously achieved throughout his brilliant career. The last years of his life were dedicated to promoting artistic vocations. Twenty years after his death, this upright and authentic man of unwavering morals is missed in his private life and in his profession as an actor.
All Gregory Peck movies on TCM
Monday June 12
03:05 The Invisible Barrier (Gentleman’s Agreement, 1947)
05:00 The Gunfighter (Blood Fever) (The Gunfighter, 1950)
06:25 To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
08:30 Arabesque (Arabesque, 1966)
10:15 The keys of the kingdom (The Keys of the Kingdom, 1944)
12:30 My distrustful wife (Designing Woman, 1957)
14:25 The world in his hands (The World In His Arms, 1952)
16:10 The conquest of the West (How the West Was Won, 1962)
18:35 The Merciless Avenger (The Bravados, 1958)
20:20 Cape Terror (Cape Fear, 1962)
22:00 Gregory Peck, el gran actor (Gregory Peck, The Gentleman Actor, 2022)
22:55 The children of Brazil (The Boys From Brazil, 1978)
Monday June 19
19:55 The snows of Kilimanjaro (The Snows of Kilimanjaro, 1952)
22:00 The keys of the kingdom (The Keys of the Kingdom, 1944)
Monday June 26
20:05 The invisible barrier (Gentleman’s Agreement, 1947)
22:00 The conquest of the West (How the West Was Won, 1962)
