30 Years of Brilliance: 1930-1959
In the annals of Hollywood movie stars, few actors have been as respected and loved as Gregory Peck. He entered movies in brooding, handsome, troubled roles, and emerged, after a career of more than 50 years, as one of Hollywood's most treasured movie stars, representing conviction, decency, intelligence, and old-fashioned values.
He was undoubtedly one of the major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age and in 1999 he was named by the AFI at number twelve on the list of Greatest Male Stars of All Time. His great talents were recognised by the Academy with five Oscar nominations and one Oscar win.
Gregory Peck was one of 20th Century Pictures most popular film stars, from the 1940s to the 1960s, and played important roles well into the 1990s. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Peck among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking him at No. 12. He was nominated for Best Actor Oscars five times in the course of his career and appeared in nine Best Picture nominated films.
It was whilst he was at the University of California, where he had enrolled as a medical student, that Peck found he had a natural gift and flair for acting. He graduated in 1939 and immediately moved to New York to pursue his new ambition. His natural ability and easy style were quickly spotted and he made his first appearance on Broadway in 'The Morning Star'.
He made his big-screen debut in 1944, as a resistance fighter in 'Days of Glory, and then won his first Academy Award nomination for his second film role in 1946, as a priest, Father Francis Chisholm, in 'The Keys of the Kingdom'. He had, almost overnight, achieved major stardom.
Peck was unique early on in that from the start he insisted on selecting, with great care, all his scripts personally, and, even more unusually, he did not commit to one studio alone. In 1945 he had a major hit for MGM with 'The Valley of Decision', following up and getting better with Alfred Hitchcock's 'Spellbound'. In 1947 he received his second Academy Award nomination for 'The Yearling', and had another success the following year as the reporter uncovering anti-semitism in 'Gentleman's Agreement'.
His fourth Academy nomination came with his riveting portrayal of the colonel with a breakdown in 'Twelve OClock High' in 1949.Other important films at this time were the Western, 'Yellow Sky' in 1948, with Richard Widmark, the Dostoyevsky figure in 'The Great Sinner' in 1949 and with a drooping moustache, weary of killing as 'The Gunfighter' in 1950.
He was implacably resourceful beneath a tricone hat in 'Captain Horatio Hornblower' in 1951; then he appeared in the successful but stuffy 'David and Bathsheba' in the same year. After refusing, for mysterious reasons, the plum role of the marshall in 'High Noon' he played the wounded husband in 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro in 1952. He then had an 18 month tax break working in Europe, squiring the young Audrey Hepburn in the wonderful comedy 'Roman Holiday' for William Wyler in 1953, and then in Britain for 'The Million Pound Note' and Ceylon for the fine war movie, 'The Purple Plain'.
Peck married Greta Kukkonen in 1942 they divorced in 1955, remaining good friends and parents to their three sons. Very soon after his divorce Peck married a French reporter, Veronique Passani, who had interviewed him prior to his departure to film 'Roman Holiday'. They had two children, Anthony and Cecilia, who both became actors. He and his wife stayed together until Peck's death.
Back in the States he had a smash hit and some wartime adultery in 'The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit' in 1956 and then played one of his most famouw roles, an heroic, misanthropic Ahab in Moby Dick in the same year. He had another hit in 1958 with 'The Big Country' quickly followed by another, 'The Bravados'. He then appeared helplessly adrift as Scott Fitzgerald in 'Beloved Infidel' in 1959 but the next films he made that year, 'Pork Chop Hill' playing the conscience-laden patoon commander in Korea, and 'On the Beach' as the submarine commander sailing into the nuclear haze, were both extremely successful. But it was his role as the liberal, smalltown defense lawyer Atticus Finch, defending a colored man charged with rape in 'To Kill a Mockingbird in 1962 that finally won him an Oscar for Best Actor. He had another success that year, co-starring in the epic 'How the West Was Won'.
That was the end of Peck's run of major successes. He continued to make movies, but not with the same panache and conviction. In 1964 his role as a Spanish loyalist in 'Behold a Pale Horse', did not ring true, and the comedy with Tony Curtis, 'Captain Newman,M.D.', which followed, also did badly. After a disappointing 1966 with the poor 'Mirage' and 'Arabesque' Peck left our screens completely for 3 years. His fortunes did not improve when he returned in 1969. He still looked less than his real age, but still looked somehow too complacent for great suffering, too bland to be a leader in an age of Watergate.
His dignity and solidity were used well as the impossibly harassed ambassador in 'The Omen in 1976, and he was intelligent and proud as 'MacArthur' in 1977. He was too genteel and restrained for the Nazi in 'The Boys from Brazil' in 1978, so he wasted the part's evil in overacting. Nevertheless, of course, he remained a star into old age, and stuck around to do some television work and performed cameos in remakes of his earlier vehicles 'Cape Fear' in 1991 and'Moby Dick' in 1998.
He was also noted for being civic-minded, for his Roman Catholic faith, and for his liberal politics. He served as president of the Academy Awards body, and was active in the Motion Picture and Television Relief Fund, American Cancer Society, National Endowment for the Arts, and other causes. He won many awards, including the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1967, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American film Institute in 1989, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his humanitarian work.
Gregory Peck died on June 12, 2003, aged 87. He is buried in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles.
