Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor. One of the world's most popular film stars
from the 1940s to the 1960s, Peck continued to play major film roles until the late 1970s.
He is best known for his performance as Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird,
which earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor. He had also been nominated for an Oscar
for the same category for The Keys of the Kingdom, The Yearling, Gentleman's Agreement
and Twelve O'Clock High. Other notable films he appeared in include Spellbound, The Paradine
Case, Roman Holiday, Moby Dick, The Guns of Navarone, Cape Fear, How the West Was Won,
The Omen and The Boys from Brazil. President Lyndon Johnson honored Peck with
the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 for his lifetime humanitarian efforts. In
1999, the American Film Institute named Peck among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time,
ranking at No. 12. He was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1983.
Early life Eldred Gregory Peck was born in the San Diego,
California neighborhood of La Jolla, the son of Missouri-born Bernice Mary "Bunny" and
Gregory Pearl Peck, a New York-born chemist and pharmacist. His father was of Irish heritage
and English heritage, while his mother had Scottish and English ancestry. Peck's father
was a Roman Catholic, while his mother converted to the denomination when she married his father.
Through his Irish-born paternal grandmother Catherine Ashe, Peck was related to Thomas
Ashe, who took part in the Easter Rising fewer than three weeks after Peck's birth and died
while on hunger strike in 1917. Peck's parents divorced by the time he was six years old;
his maternal grandmother raised him for the next few years.
Peck attended a Roman Catholic military school, St. John's Military Academy, in Los Angeles
at the age of 10. His grandmother died while he was enrolled there, and his father again
took over his upbringing. At 14, Peck attended San Diego High School and lived with his father.
When he graduated, he enrolled briefly at San Diego State Teacher's College,, joined
the track team, took his first theatre and public-speaking courses, and joined the Epsilon
Eta fraternity. He stayed for just one academic year, thereafter obtaining admission to his
first-choice college, the University of California, Berkeley. For a short time, he took a job
driving a truck for an oil company. In 1936, he declared himself a pre-medical student
at Berkeley, and majored in English. Standing 6 ft 3 in, he rowed on the university crew.
The Berkeley acting coach saw Peck as perfect material for university theater. Peck developed
an interest in acting and was recruited by Edwin Duerr, director of the university's
Little Theater. He appeared in five plays during his senior year. Although his tuition
fee was only $26 per year, Peck still struggled to pay, and had to work as a "hasher" for
the Gamma Phi Beta sorority in exchange for meals. Peck would later say about Berkeley
that, "it was a very special experience for me and three of the greatest years of my life.
It woke me up and made me a human being." In 1997, Peck donated $25,000 to the Berkeley
rowing crew in honor of his coach, the renowned Ky Ebright.
Acting career Stage
After graduating from Berkeley with a BA degree in English, Peck dropped the name "Eldred"
and headed to New York City to study at the Neighborhood Playhouse with the legendary
acting teacher Sanford Meisner. He was often broke and sometimes slept in Central Park.
He worked at the 1939 World's Fair and as a tour guide for NBC's television broadcasting.
In 1940, Peck learned more of the acting craft, working in exchange for food, at the Barter
Theatre in Abingdon, VA, appearing in five plays including Family Portrait and On Earth
As It Is. His stage career began in 1941 when he played
the secretary in a Katharine Cornell production of George Bernard Shaw's play The Doctor's
Dilemma. Unfortunately, the play opened in San Francisco just one week before the attack
on Pearl Harbor. He made his Broadway debut as the lead in Emlyn Williams' The Morning
Star in 1942. His second Broadway performance that year was in The Willow and I with Edward
Pawley. Peck's acting abilities were in high demand during World War II because he was
exempt from military service owing to a back injury suffered while receiving dance and
movement lessons from Martha Graham as part of his acting training. Twentieth Century
Fox claimed he had injured his back while rowing at university, but in Peck's words,
"In Hollywood, they didn't think a dance class was macho enough, I guess. I've been trying
to straighten out that story for years." In 1947, Peck co-founded The La Jolla Playhouse,
at his birthplace, with Mel Ferrer and Dorothy McGuire. This local community theater and
landmark still thrives today. It has attracted Hollywood film stars on hiatus both as performers
and enthusiastic supporters since its inception. Film
Peck's first film, Days of Glory, was released in 1944. He was nominated for the Academy
Award for Best Actor five times, four of which came in his first five years of film acting:
for The Keys of the Kingdom, The Yearling, Gentleman's Agreement, and Twelve O'Clock
High. The Keys of the Kingdom emphasized his stately
presence. As the farmer Ezra "Penny" Baxter in The Yearling, his good-humored warmth and
affection toward the characters playing his son and wife confounded critics who had been
insisting he was a lifeless performer. Duel in the Sun showed his range as an actor in
his first "against type" role as a cruel, libidinous gunslinger. Gentleman's Agreement
established his power in the "social conscience" genre in a film that took on the deep-seated
but subtle antisemitism of mid-century corporate America. Twelve O'Clock High was the first
of many successful war films in which Peck embodied the brave, effective, yet human fighting
man. Among his other films were Spellbound, The
Paradine Case, The Gunfighter, Moby Dick, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, On the Beach,
which brought to life the terrors of global nuclear war, The Guns of Navarone, and Roman
Holiday, with Audrey Hepburn in her Oscar-winning role. Peck and Hepburn were close friends
until her death; Peck even introduced her to her first husband, Mel Ferrer. Peck once
again teamed up with director William Wyler in the epic Western The Big Country, which
he co-produced. Peck won the Academy Award with his fifth nomination, playing Atticus
Finch, a Depression-era lawyer and widowed father, in a film adaptation of the Harper
Lee novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Released in 1962 during the height of the US civil
rights movement in the South, this film and his role were Peck's favorites. In 2003, Peck's
portrayal of Atticus Finch was named the greatest film hero of the past 100 years by the American
Film Institute.
Peck served as the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1967,
Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the American Film Institute from 1967 to 1969, Chairman
of the Motion Picture and Television Relief Fund in 1971, and National Chairman of the
American Cancer Society in 1966. He was a member of the National Council on the Arts
from 1964 to 1966. A physically powerful man, he was known to
do a majority of his own fight scenes, rarely using body or stunt doubles. In fact, Robert
Mitchum, his on-screen opponent in Cape Fear, told about the time Peck once accidentally
punched him for real during their final fight scene in the movie. He felt the impact for
days afterward. Peck's rare attempts at villainous roles were not acclaimed. Early on, he played
the renegade son in the Western Duel in the Sun and, later in his career, the infamous
Nazi doctor Josef Mengele in The Boys from Brazil co-starring Laurence Olivier.
Later work In the 1980s, Peck moved to television, where
he starred in the mini-series The Blue and the Gray, playing Abraham Lincoln. He also
starred with Christopher Plummer, John Gielgud, and Barbara Bouchet in the television film
The Scarlet and The Black, about Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, a real-life Roman Catholic
priest in the Vatican who smuggled Jews and other refugees away from the Nazis during
World War II.
Peck, Mitchum, and Martin Balsam all had roles in the 1991 remake of Cape Fear directed by
Martin Scorsese. All three were in the original 1962 version. In the remake, Peck played Max
Cady's lawyer. His last prominent film role also came in
1991, in Other People's Money, directed by Norman Jewison and based on the stage play
of that name. Peck played a business owner trying to save his company against a hostile
takeover bid by a Wall Street liquidator played by Danny DeVito.
Peck retired from active film-making at that point. Peck spent the last few years of his
life touring the world doing speaking engagements in which he would show clips from his movies,
reminisce, and take questions from the audience. He did come out of retirement for a 1998 miniseries
version of one of his most famous films, Moby Dick, portraying Father Mapple, with Patrick
Stewart as Captain Ahab, the role Peck played in the earlier film. It would be his final
performance, and it won him the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries
or Television Film. Peck had been offered the role of Grandpa
Joe in the 2005 film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but died before he could accept it.
The Irish actor David Kelly was then given the part.
Politics In 1947, while many Hollywood figures were
being blacklisted for similar activities, Peck signed a letter deploring a House Un-American
Activities Committee investigation of alleged communists in the film industry.
A lifelong supporter of the Democratic Party, Peck was suggested in 1970 as a possible Democratic
candidate to run against Ronald Reagan for the office of California Governor. Although
he later admitted that he had no interest in being a candidate himself for public office,
Peck encouraged one of his sons, Carey Peck, to run for political office. Carey was defeated
both times by slim margins in races in 1978 and 1980 against Republican U.S. Representative
Bob Dornan, another former actor. In an interview with the Irish media, Peck
revealed that former President Lyndon Johnson had told him that, had he sought re-election
in 1968, he intended to offer Peck the post of U.S. ambassador to Ireland – a post Peck,
owing to his Irish ancestry, said he might well have taken, saying "[It] would have been
a great adventure". The actor's biographer Michael Freedland substantiates the report
and says that Johnson indicated that his presentation of the Medal of Freedom to Peck would perhaps
make up for his inability to confer the ambassadorship. President Richard Nixon, though, placed Peck
on his enemies list owing to his liberal activism. Peck was outspoken against the Vietnam War,
while remaining supportive of his son, Stephen, who fought there. In 1972, Peck produced the
film version of Daniel Berrigan's play The Trial of the Catonsville Nine about the prosecution
of a group of Vietnam protesters for civil disobedience. Despite his reservations about
American general Douglas MacArthur as a man, Peck had long wanted to play him on film,
and did so in MacArthur in 1976. In 1978, Peck traveled to Alabama, the setting
of To Kill a Mockingbird, to campaign for Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Donald W. Stewart
of Anniston, who defeated the Republican candidate, James D. Martin, a former U.S. representative
from Gadsden. In 1987, Peck undertook the voice-overs for
television commercials opposing President Reagan's Supreme Court nomination of conservative
jurist Robert Bork. Bork's nomination was defeated. Peck was also a vocal supporter
of a worldwide ban of nuclear weapons, and a lifelong advocate of gun control.
Personal life and death
In October 1942, Peck married Finnish-born Greta Kukkonen, with whom he had three sons,
Jonathan, Stephen, and Carey Paul. They were divorced on December 30, 1955, but maintained
a very good relationship. Jonathan Peck, a television news reporter, committed suicide
in 1975. Stephen Peck is active in support of American veterans from the Vietnam War;
his first wife is screenwriter Kimi Peck, who co-wrote Little Darlings with Dalene Young.
Carey Peck had political ambitions, running for Congress in California in 1978 and again
in 1980 with the support of his father and family. He narrowly lost to conservative Republican
Bob Dornan. During his marriage with Greta, Peck had a
brief affair with Spellbound costar Ingrid Bergman. He confessed the affair to Brad Darrach
of People in a 1987 interview saying, "All I can say is that I had a real love for her,
and I think that's where I ought to stop…. I was young. She was young. We were involved
for weeks in close and intense work." On December 31, 1955, the day after his divorce
was finalized, Peck married Veronique Passani, a Paris news reporter who had interviewed
him in 1953 before he went to Italy to film Roman Holiday. He asked her to lunch six months
later and they became inseparable. They had a son, Anthony Peck, and a daughter, Cecilia
Peck. The couple remained married until Gregory Peck's death. His daughter Cecilia lives in
Los Angeles. Peck had grandchildren from both marriages.
Peck owned the thoroughbred steeplechase race horse Different Class, which raced in England.
The horse was favored for the 1968 Grand National but finished third. Peck was close friends
with French president Jacques Chirac. Peck was a Roman Catholic and once considered
becoming a priest. When asked if he was a practicing Catholic, Peck laughed "Not a fanatic,
but I practice enough to keep the franchise." He disagreed with the Church's positions on
abortion and the ordination of women. His second marriage was performed by a justice
of the peace instead of within the Church because of the Catholic Church's prohibition
of divorced persons receiving Church weddings that have not been annulled. Some ways Peck
expressed his faith was as a significant fundraiser for a priest friend of his, and co-producer
of a cassette recording of the New Testament with his son Stephen.
On June 12, 2003, Peck died in his sleep at home from bronchopneumonia at the age of 87.
His wife, Veronique, was by his side. Gregory Peck is entombed in the Cathedral
of Our Lady of the Angels mausoleum in Los Angeles, California. His eulogy was read by
Brock Peters, whose character, Tom Robinson, was defended by Peck's Atticus Finch in To
Kill a Mockingbird. Awards and honors
Peck was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning once. He was nominated for The Keys
of the Kingdom, The Yearling, Gentleman's Agreement and Twelve O'Clock High. He won
the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill
a Mockingbird. In 1968 he received the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
Peck also received many Golden Globe awards. He won in 1947 for The Yearling, in 1963 for
To Kill a Mockingbird, and in 1999 for the TV mini series Moby Dick. He was nominated
in 1978 for The Boys from Brazil. He received the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1969, and was
given the Henrietta Award in 1951 and 1955 for World Film Favorite – Male.
In 1969, US President Lyndon Johnson honored Peck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom,
the nation's highest civilian honor. In 1971 the Screen Actors Guild presented Peck with
the SAG Life Achievement Award. In 1989 the American Film Institute gave Peck the AFI
Life Achievement Award. He received the Crystal Globe award for outstanding artistic contribution
to world cinema in 1996. In 1986, Peck was honored alongside actress
Gene Tierney with the first Donostia Lifetime Achievement Award at the San Sebastian Film
Festival Spain for their body of work. In 1987, Peck was awarded the George Eastman
Award, given by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film.
In 1993, Peck was awarded with an Honorary Golden Bear at the 43rd Berlin International
Film Festival. In 1998, he was awarded the National Medal
of Arts. In 2000, Peck was made a Doctor of Letters
by the National University of Ireland. He was a founding patron of the University College
Dublin School of Film, where he persuaded Martin Scorsese to become an honorary patron.
Peck was also chairman of the American Cancer Society for a short time.
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Gregory Peck has a star on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame at 6100 Hollywood Blvd. In November 2005 the star was stolen, and has since been
replaced. On April 28, 2011, a ceremony was held in
Beverly Hills, California celebrating the first day of issue of a U.S. postage stamp
commemorating Peck. The stamp is the 17th commemorative stamp in the Legends of Hollywood
series. Filmography
See also List of notable Presidential Medal of Freedom
recipients References
Further reading Fishgall, Gary. Gregory Peck: A Biography.
New York: Scribner. 2002. ISBN 0-684-85290-X Freedland, Michael. Gregory Peck: A Biography.
New York: William Morrow and Company. 1980. ISBN 0-688-03619-8
Haney, Lynn. Gregory Peck: A Charmed Life. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. 2004.
ISBN 0-7867-1473-5 External links
Gregory Peck at the Internet Broadway Database Gregory Peck at the Internet Movie Database
Gregory Peck at the TCM Movie Database Gregory Peck at Find a Grave
Gregory Peck – Daily Telegraph obituary Gregory Peck in the 1920 US Census, 1930 US
Census, and the Social Security Death Index.