The Untold Story of Gregory Peck – Hollywood’s Most Respected Star – ht
A silent movie company came to Laa. There were bathing beauties frolicking on the beach. But the impression they made was that they came from some other galaxy. For one thing, the makeup it looked like they all had their faces painted orange. Well, if somebody at that moment had come along and said, “Look, you’re going to grow and be just like that and you’re going to have that orange stuff on your face and you’re going to play makeelieve in front of a camera.
” And I thought they were totally out of their minds, but this is what I’ve been doing for about 40 years now on a lot of locations and a lot of different parts of the world. And I love it. He’s to me the ultimate movie star. You know it. There’s nobody more handsome or more gentle or romantic on the screen, I don’t think, for all ages.
He represented, I guess, everything kind of uh strong and reliable and and solid. I guess we all resented the fact that we all didn’t look like Gregory Peek or had that wonderful voice he is. He’s a beautiful survivor. Anybody that’s been a star that long, made that many good films, has got to be very special.
He’s a tall, wonderful looking man, but also his he has a big soul. He can give a performance that will make an audience think he can touch them. his ideals have somehow remained uh strong in him and he’s never let the career completely uh overtake that and has the audacity if you will to believe that he can change the world by virtue of the things that he does and the things that he says.
Miss Jean Louise, Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passing for some reason or other. I had quit college and I was driving a big Union Oil truck around San Diego. Uh bought myself a little Ford Roadster and uh life was pretty good. But it came home to me that if I was going to do anything at all that I was going to have to do it for myself.
So I went to Berkeley and that was an awakening. Students from all over the world, a wonderful faculty, there were sports. I was in the adored crew. And then the matter of girls, I found I could have a girlfriend and uh and could uh uh be uh accepted as a regular fellow. I came alive.
When this fellow asked me to be in a play, I was very green and awkward. He always had the feeling that he was embarrassed being up in front of all these people. I saw a man in a Christie and this is this tall, lanky, skinny kid, charmingly clumsy. But as terrible as I was, it attracted me. Later on, I reasoned out why.
Because my childhood was a little bit unstable and I was jerked around here and there, it was hard for me to communicate with people. I was a small town kid from La Hoya. There was only one of everything in La Hoya. There was one doctor, one grocery store, one hardware store. My father, he had the drugstore and he was a good-looking young fellow and he was a catch. And my mother came along.
Beautiful young lady from St. Louis and they hit it off. But it didn’t last very long. And my mother, she and I went back to St. Louis and we lived in a very curious, slightly rundown boarding house. And I can hardly believe now that I was actually at the age of six selling newspapers down on the street corner where the trolley car went by.
We came back to La Hoya. My mother went to work in Los Angeles and I lived with this wonderful grandmother. I got a dog whose name was Bud and for a couple of years I was totally happy. But we didn’t have the habit of conversation at home. I never remember once ever sitting around a dinner table with my family and and and having uh ordinary kind of family conversation.
So I think that I uh I reached out to that audience to try to make contact with them to try to make friends with them and to tell them a story that I wanted to tell. So we graduated and the next time I saw him actually was um at the neighborhood playhouse in New York. That was a great discovery to study acting with Sandy Meisner.
One of the things that was good about it was that you learn that you have to take a chance on making a total jackass out of yourself and overcome that inhibition. I didn’t have fantasies about being up on the silver screen. I had stage ambitions. When we finished the two-year course of the neighborhood playhouse, there was what we called a demonstration play.
And then it was the custom for all the students to run back to the school the next morning and hope that the phone would ring and they would get a call. The phone did ring presently and the receptionist nodded at me and she said, “Katherine McClintic wants to see you.” I ran down four flights of stairs along 46th Street to 6th Avenue, four blocks to 50th and 6th, slid into an elevator, shot up to the 8th floor, ran down the marble hallway.
I dashed in and skidded to a stopper in front of his desk and he was still talking to the receptionist at the neighborhood playhouse. He started laughing, and I thought he was going into a fit. Well, when he recovered, he said, [laughter] “You’ve got the job.” And I had few lines, but that didn’t matter. I was with a great company.
I was with pros. I met Greg many, many, many years ago before anyone knew of Gregory Peek when he was on the stage. And I was like 17 years old. And I don’t know how I got there, but I was brought to Guthrie Mcclintic’s house and Greg was there. He was this beautiful creature enough to sweep any girl off her feet.
Well, after my third Broadway show, my young wife and I found ourselves stony broke and it struck me that I might pick up a little spare change by making a movie. and I made the movie which was a clinker and I didn’t want to go back to New York leaving a bad picture on my record and I’d sort of begun to like movie work.
So I decided to accept another offer. It was a biggie. I have been instructed to thank you and to say they will not be necessary for you to trouble yourself again. Oh, it’s no trouble at all. Just a simple matter of changing addressing. Even that will no longer be required. Thank you. If I ever run across it now, I see a very skinny, very sincere young man who is absolutely putting his heart and soul into every scene.
Dear Lord, let me have patience and forbearance where now I have angered. Give me humility, Lord. After all, it was only thy merciful goodness and thy divine providence that saved the boy. But they are ungrateful, and you know it. But I’m here to tell you that sincerity is not enough. You have to have salt and pepper. You have to bring experience from life.
You have to have ideas of your own. you have to have humor. But I got by and it was a big hit and I got an Academy nomination and we went back for the opening and there was a sign about a block long and 40 ft high on Time Square and you know it seemed like a few months before that that uh I’ve been walking around you know without 20 cents in my pocket and and it was all changed.
I became a picture actor. I think you know everyone here. Dr. Edwards. No, not yet. Oh, it’s Dr. Peterson. How do you do, Dr. Edwards? Hitchcock was a master of film technique and I was quite green at that time, fresh from studies with Sanford Meisner and the method. So I had to do it from inside. It’s just all terribly simple.
It isn’t gussied up with 15 shadings and sly little looks and uh and all of that. It’s very pure. It’s like a light that’s on. And that was not Hitchcock’s way. He he wanted the right turn, the right reaction as he had visualized it sitting in the office. I was an amnesiac, crazy in the head. Something’s happening. What is it? I wouldn’t have come back as Dr.
Edwards if I hadn’t known that he was dead. Your guilt fantasies were obviously inflamed by your duties as a soldier. Oh, stop it. Babbling like some phony King Solomon. sit there full of half of devil talk that doesn’t make sense. If there’s anything I hate, it’s a smug woman. Most memorable about that picture was Ingred, who was a fantastic Swedish beauty and had just come into her own.
For what it’s worth, I I can’t remember ever having pissed any other woman before. In most cases, the role that he was playing, the kind of solid uh honest man is pretty close to the truth. If you take a film though like Duel in the Sun where he played Loot, uh that’s a character that that goes that is against his character.
But it wasn’t difficult. I borrowed a lot of mannerisms from a cousin of mine. Stretch bro. Think I’ll try to get you one of them new fangled bathing suits. She swims real well. Mom, where’d you learn, Pearl? He was kind of a devil with the ladies. You You vomit. What you getting your bristles up about, Pearl? [laughter] Basically, it’s play acting.
When you do a western that isn’t too far from the playing you did out in the backyard when you were a kid playing the good guys and the bad guys. Why don’t you leave this one alone? What’s the matter, judge? You got her ear marked for yourself? Aside from the fact that I was playing a rascal, I worked on horsemanship and I had a wonderful teacher, Ralph McCutchen, and he taught me a lot of trick mounts and dismounts.
And I was pretty nimble in those days. Come on, push. Give me a good push. Jennifer Jones had just played St. Bernardet and I had just played a saintly young priest. Selnic had a lot of mischief in him and I think he got a kick out of putting these two in roles that were a little bit runchy for that time. I never thought of him as evil.
Although he did uh shoot his own brother, forge checks, gamble, and didn’t really treat Jennifer as a gentleman should. I think the audience rather likes bad guys because they come up with surprises. And in a way, they’re easier to play. The real trick is to make a character who has got all the noble virtues interesting.
I’m Jewish and you don’t take Jews. That’s it, isn’t it? I never said that. If you don’t accept Jews, say so. Don’t raise your voice to me, Mr. Green. Otherwise, what? Gentleman’s agreement dealt with the subject of anti-semitism in America. Everything was not so perfect when people because they happened to be of one religion were shunned or had to suffer from prejudice.
These things are not characteristic of the best of America. And we went at it hammer and tong dealing with an area where we could stand some improvement. You really do think I’m an anti-semite. No, I don’t care. You do. You’ve thought it secretly for a long time. No, it’s just that I’ve come to see that lots of nice people who aren’t.
People who despise it and detest it and deplore it and protest their own innocence help it along and not wonder why it grows. People who never beat up a Jew or your kite a child. People who think that anti-semitism is something away off in some dark crackpot place with lowass morons. That’s the biggest discovery I’ve made about this whole business.
Kathy, the good people, the nice people. Elia Kazan is a feisty, brilliant director and I think there are times when he would have liked to have seen me punch a hole in the wall. Well, I showed my feelings in a different way. In a sense, he reminds me of Hank Fonda because neither of them are known for the great explosive scene.
They give a simple overall performance. And believe me, simple is not only better, it’s more difficult. I tried not always just to walk on as myself. I tried to characterize and I think I have somewhat but I’ve always been aware that what the audience wants to know about is really you. How you cope with the situations that are given to you.
Even if you’re playing a character very far from yourself and wearing a a beard and a putty nose and using an accent, they’re interested in the person, I think, more than they’re interested in the skillful actor. So, you try to be both. I think I was about 34. I went and had a talk with Henry King and Daryl Xanic and I said, “I think I’m a bit young to be a general.
” Henry said, “No, I know what you can do and you trust me.” Now, I don’t have a lot of patience with this what are we fighting for stuff. We’re in a war, a shooting war. We’ve got to fight and some of us have got to die. I’m not trying to tell you not to be afraid. Fear is normal, but stop worrying about it and about yourselves.
Stop making plans. Forget about going home. Consider yourselves already dead. This was a fellow who would stretch himself to the limit and then beyond. What’s the matter, sir? I don’t know. Are you sick, sir? Harm. Something wrong? It won’t work. Stop it. Stop it. I’m right here, Frank. It’s okay. It’s all the color.
Maybe my mother and father decided that I was having too much fun in La Hoya or that I needed discipline. So they shipped me off to Catholic military boarding school. That took a big adjustment. From the moment we got out of bed in the morning, we knelt down to our prayers. We marched to the wash basins and brushed our teeth in unison.
And then when they laid the military on top of us, they really had us coming and going. One of the things that you didn’t do there was quit anything once you’d started. You You went to the finish. That’s the kind of man that I admire. A man who will make the necessary sacrifices whether it was to bomb the ballbearing works in Frankfurt or get the wagon train across the plains.
The gunfighter is one of my favorite pictures of all the pictures I’ve made. And the director and I like the idea of this kind of period mustache cuz it was a western of the 1870s and Spirus Gurus and Daryl Xanic were in Europe. They came back and saw the first two weeks rushes and they went through the ceiling and they said, “You can’t put an ugly mustache like that on a on a young fellow.
He’s don’t you understand? He’s a leading man. He’s a sex symbol. Women don’t like mustaches on men.” But uh was too late for them to have everything shot over. It would have cost him too much. But I never saw Skurus as long as he lived. But what he didn’t say to me, a damn mustache of yours cost us millions. But uh we were happy cuz uh it was authentic.
What about this? Ain’t some of you fellas in charge of this donkey? Eddie don’t mean no real harm, Mr. Ringo. And let Eddie keep his big ugly nose out of my business if he don’t want to get it slapped. He comes into town hoping to see his wife and kid and go off with him somewhere and stop being a gunslinger and live in peace.
But you got to say you’ll talk to me about it again. I will. Well, we can make it, honey. We can make it. Well, the fates were against him. He put too many notches in his gun. I drew first. You don’t have to do me no favors, Papy. Keep your mouth shut. If I was doing you a favor, I’d let him hang you right now and get it all over with.
But I don’t want you to get off that light. I want you to go on being a big tough Gunny. I want you to see what it means. These men had the kind of character we think of as the best of American character. The self-reliance, courage, the stoicism, practicality, and in their way uh they were romantic too. That character I played in The Gunfighter, I often thought, well, under different circumstances, he could have become the governor of Texas.
He just didn’t have the right start in life. I first saw Gregory Peek when he was making Captain Horatio hornblower. Fire as your gun spare BATTERY RELOAD. WELL DONE. Rail Bal, a wonderful action director, was doing a scene with Greg and Virginia Mayo. And Greg stood where he was and said, “Look, that scene was not right.
I can do it better.” And I remember Walsh saying, “No, no, no, no. It’s all right. let’s get on with the action. But Greg stood his ground and they had to go back. They’d already moved the camera, I remember. And uh they had to go back and do the scene over and I was so impressed. It was wonderful. What the devil is that, Mr.
Long? Forgive me, Captain, but I was about to tell you that I require passage to England for myself and my maid. Not in Lydia. Do you suggest that we swim home? I suggest that your lady ship cross the ismas of Panama and embark on a ship which has frills and fancies enough for women passengers. How much longer are we going to pretend? You must know I love you.
Why do you fight against it? I’m married Lady Barbara. I think I have a different perception of my dad than most people. When they see him on the screen, they see a strong heroic figure. I see the other side. I see a man of enormous sensitivity. Sometimes a sensitivity that’s so great that he masks it with the strength that he has.
people even subconsciously pick up on that that vulnerability and that sensitivity and they like him all the more for it. I owe Greg a great deal if not everything because stars had uh approval of script and also approval of co- co-stars or co-acctors and Greg could very well have said at the time well you know just a little dancer and perhaps we’d better get somebody more established.
Willie Wiler told me that the princess was going to be played by an unknown named Audrey Hepern. So I thought, well, he must have found a marvelous girl. Well, he he found one of the great film stars of all time, your highness. Yes. What is it? There’s a scene in Roman Holiday which takes place at the mouth of truth and there’s this legend that uh if you if you’re telling a lie and you put your hand in there, it’ll be bitten off.
Just before the tape, I said to Willie, “Would it be too corny if I put my hand in there and then I pulled it out like this, which is an old stick that Red Skeleton used to do all the time.” I had not been told nor did we rehearse uh about what was going to happen in the scene. And so we played the scene and Greg put his hand in there and hello.
And the scream I let out was good and proper because it was very funny but it was also very scary. Okay. All right. It’s rare a romantic light comedy that also has a genuine love story that made people want for this unlikely pair to have a happy ending. Well, it was impossible. I don’t know how to say goodbye. I can’t think of any words.
Don’t try it. Still, you go out with a feeling that we’re both better off for having had this brief romance. There’s something lovely which William Wiler told me not very long before he died. He said, “Did you know that Greg during the picture uh insisted that you be co-starred with him rather than my name being under the title?” I don’t know if people realize with what generosity he did that.
My agent, he said, “Well, why should you do that? I mean, you’ve worked for years for this.” I said, “George, don’t think that I’m being so all fire generous. This girl is so great. She’ll probably win the Academy Award in her first performance, and I’ll look like a damn fool if my name is up there on top of the picture by myself.
” So in my first picture, not only was I co-starred, but there was an enormous gift which he gave to me. Apart from being in a beautiful movie, it it gave me an Oscar. Which of the cities visited did your highness enjoy the most? Each in its own way was unforgettable. It would be difficult to Rome. By all means, Rome, I will cherish my visit here in memory as long as I live.
An element of its personality that’s so appealing is that you feel he’s a really very decent man and yet not heavy about it. He generates a feeling of someone you could lean on. The most wonderful thing that has happened to me is meeting Veranique and being married to her for 32 years. We’re very much of a team.
I consult with her. She’s very imaginative, wise, and witty. Sometimes we’re together uh 24 hours a day for weeks on end. And uh it may sound odd, but we like it that way. When you get to know Veronique, then you know a lot about Greg, too. Like at his birthday party and I mean, you arrive at Veronique’s home and she opens the door and she’s got her her hair pieces and she’s laughing at herself and she’s sort of I can’t even describe it.
There’s something about her that just takes your fatigue and goes and makes you want to have a good time. And we all stayed for hours and everyone had a ball and he and she danced together and were like kids. And you think this is a happy couple. These are people who’ve never taken each other for granted who who have such enjoyment and pleasure and respect for each other.
And that says a lot about who Peek is. That that he and she are together and that this kind of a relationship exists after all these years and that their children are so close to them and love them and respect them so much. I mean that it just it says worlds. The gods were smiling on us. We were meant to be together.
I’ve always been friends with Tony and Cecilia and the friendship that I’ve seen between the parents and the children is it’s unusual. They treat the kids with respect and they’re great kids. Maybe I could have gone on playing the character in the Gunfighter or the character uh uh in Roman Holiday and developed it to the point where I could almost phone it in.
He hardly took the uh uh the easy road and it still it worked for him. The white whale tasks me. He heaps me. Yet he is but a mask. It is the thing behind the mask I chiefly hate. Pledge yourselves, heart, soul, body, as I pledge myself. Death to movie dick. When the camera is going, you lose all sense of reality, all fear.
Uh you lose your inhibitions. You become part of that little world that’s going on in front of the camera. You know, you have to be a little bit crazy to be an actor. I may be wrong, but I I think if he were asked, “What would you change in the overall career?” That he might say, “I wish I’d thrown in a few more comedic roles.
” I always felt that if I got a comedy script that it had Carrie Grant’s thumb prints on it. It was probably one of his rejects. Designing Woman must have been offered to Carrie, but it finally fell into my lap. Greg was one of my father’s favorite actors, especially doing comedy, which my dad told me he wasn’t real sure of.
the scene that I I think he’s proudest of and I know my dad was proudest of. You found a girl and you married her. I knew you’d understand. Is the scene where um he gets the spaghetti in his lap. He just did it perfectly. He never moved. Designing Woman actually is one of my favorite films.
It was a wonderful script. Very funny. A real romantic comedy. I don’t think I like fights. A lot of people do. Not all of them. To some people, it’s very boring. Boring? Well, look at those people over there. They’re reading newspapers. Give it to No, they’re not reading. I hold them that way in case the blood splatters. That was all I needed.
[screaming] The side of him that maybe the public doesn’t know so well because he doesn’t often show that side of himself is the vault. The man who loves music, who loves to dance, who loves kidding around, who likes slapstick comedy. He’s a riot. I mean, 6:00 in the morning in a cold and dusty makeup trailer, the guy can make you laugh, the shadow of your smile, the playfulness, the jokes, the Irishness.
He has this sort of ry offbeat humor and light. [singing] I enjoyed almost more than anything I’ve done being on the Jack Benny show doing an oldfashioned song and dance number with Jack and George Burns. That to me was uh the most fun I ever had performing. The Guns of Never was actually a comedy.
What these men did was incredible. The five of us uh overcame the whole Nazi army. Shave these. Get up. The trick of it is to keep the audience believing. Get on the phone. Tell them that you’re not to be disturbed until you give further orders. Remember, I speak German. Perfect. Jay Lee was a wonderful experience.
My goodness, he replaced another director. We just wondered how he was going to handle all this bunch of people who are out to shine. We had Anthony Quinn, David Nan, and of course Gregory Peek. If there had been any clash of personalities or any tensions, it would have made uh it very difficult for me.
He was reading the script on the plane and started uh shooting this big scale action picture on about 3 days notice. We called him the mighty mouse and he brought off that picture which was a huge popular success. Greg brought a wonderful atmosphere to the set. We would all sit round and Greg would perhaps say, “I think this scene can be better.
There’s not enough tension in it.” You think that I enjoy this any of You’re out of your mind. I never wanted it. I was trapped into it just like you. Just like anybody else in a uniform. Of course you wanted it. You’re an officer, aren’t you? I never had to make me an officer. I don’t want the responsibility for anything. Then you had a free ride all this time.
Someone’s got to take the responsibility if the job is going to get done. YOU THINK THAT’S EASY? He was friendly. He was generous. But if he feels something is not going uh right and that it could go right and that was due to incompetence or bad management then my god he he he showed his wroth and Greg’s wroth is something to behold.
It’s wonderful. You’re in it now up to your neck. They told me that you’re a genius with explosives. Start proving it. You got me in the mood to use this thing. And by God, if you don’t think of something, I’ll use it on you. Almost from the first moment I met Greg and we talked about Adakus, you could feel him putting on the clothes.
May I see what? And the skin of Adakus finus. Jim says his watch is going to belong to him someday. That’s right. Why? Well, customary for the boy to have his father’s watch. What are you going to give me? There’s a pearl necklace. There’s a ring that belonged to your mother. And I put them away and they’re to be yours.
He very quickly brought the kids into him. Within several days, I would see Mary Badam go over and crawl and sit in his lap. There was no plan for this to happen. Greg just behaved like the decent man that he is. And both the children sense that. My role just seemed to connect with my experiences in my early life.
Uh in some ways I connected with my dad. My dad was a wonderful fellow. He came out every Thursday to see me and that was a big day. I love my dad. There was a lot of Irish about him. He loved sports. He loved to laugh. He loved to joke and he was just an allaround good guy. We would do things like drive up to Yuseite and climb the mountains or we go to Yellowstone and for a kid to spend that time with his father was just great stuff.
The first day of the film, I saw out of the corner of my eye Harper Lee, the author, and uh I noticed a definite uh glisten on her cheeks, and a thought went through my head, even in the middle of the scene. We must we must be absolutely great. We’re tearing her heart out. I walked over expecting her to tell us how marvelous we were.
And she said, “Oh, Gregory, you’ve got a little pot belly just like my daddy.” [laughter] And so that was her idea of the highest compliment she could give me. And he was so wonderful. And he was everybody’s father. He was the father you wanted to have. The one who listened to you, you know, the one who would get you out of the woods when it got dark and you got in trouble.
You lover. It’s a very special story about a very special man dealing with the black white issue, the sense of racism, of injustice that went on in the south. Now gentlemen, in this country our courts are the great levelers. In our courts, all men are created equal. I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system.
That’s no ideal to me. That is a living working reality. Now I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence that you have heard, come to a decision and restore this man to his family. In the name of God, do your duty. It’s a royal affair in London for the English premiere of the Universal hit To Kill a Mockingbird.
And on hand is a movie star Gregory Peg. He accompanies Mrs. Peek left and actress Ava Gardner to kill a mockingb bird. Of all the pictures that I’ve made, I’ve had the most kudos, plaques, certificates, and statues from that one. Awards and movie circles are the Golden Globes. The most glamorous affair in glamorous Hollywood draws a glittering crowd.
I was up for Days of Wine and Roses. Greg was sitting smack behind me and they announced now. He stood up and he started down the aisle. He stopped and he looked down and he put his hand on my shoulder and he squeezed it and he looked at me and I knew what he was saying. Mr. Peek wins his first Oscar for his outstanding portrayal of the lawyer in Universal’s To Killer Mockingbird.
The ability to think of somebody else speaks a lot of the man. It was a moment I will never forget. Thank you fellow academy members. Thank you Harle. He cares and his status and his stardom if you will sit on him very easily. He hasn’t ever uh I imagine ever really changed from who he was as a young man before this amazing success took over.
This man dares to do things which are not endearing or popular. I was in London and the Daily Express came out with a headline that Gregory Peek and I think uh oh maybe Paul Newman uh declared enemies of Nixon. The first call I got was from my mother. She said, “Son, what is this? Are you an enemy of the United States?” I said, “My god, no.
Somebody, I guess, in the Nixon administration doesn’t like me. by producing a film. I had taken a position against our involvement in Vietnam. If he believes in something deeply, he stands up and plants his feet and uh says, “I’m here.” I suppose that’s one of the reasons I admire him so much uh because he believes in what he believes in and nobody um makes him stray from that belief.
The idea that we were destroying a people in order to try to democratize them finally became a nightmarish reality. The Caitensville Mind was probably the strongest and most outspoken statement against our continued involvement there that was put on its own. At the same time, I’ve felt very proud that one of my sons spent a year in combat there as a marine lieutenant, served his country, and thank God came back safely.
I was drafted and really felt the obligation to go. dad believed that we should pursue things that could make a difference in this world. As a result, Johnny went into the Peace Corp. Carrie became a politician, standing for the right things. And Anthony and Cecilia, I’m sure, have that same sense as they pursue their acting careers.
I’ve been a documentary filmmaker for many years and I’ve always pursued the kind of stories where I could say something that I thought was important that certainly uh came right from dad. He’s been lucky enough to do films on issues that are close to him. Films that really had a lot to say about the human condition.
The night before we started shooting, I’ll never forget, he sent me roses. He sent me two dozen pink roses with a lovely little note saying, “At last, we get to work together and in such a jolly little subject.” Haha. Because it was the omen. What’s the matter, Damian? Oh, it’s just a church, that’s all. Mr. Ambassador, welcome, sir.
Good morning. Your wife is in danger. She’ll die unless you come. What in God’s name are you talking about? Your son, Mr. Thorne, the son of the devil. You want me to stab him? Want me to murder a child? It’s not A CHILD. IT’S INSANE. I won’t have anything to do with murdering a little boy. He’s not responsible. I won’t do it.
Tom, I suspect that Greg read this script and thought this is going to be something very special. I didn’t know that. I was just happy to have the job at the time, quite frankly. But I think he saw it as being something that could really go through the roof, which of course it did. At a certain age as an actor, you begin to think, well, uh I’m not quite uh as live and uh as agile as I was.
And I love uh the profession. I love making movies. I want to go on doing it. So, I better put on some different hats. Gregory Peek is very smart. He reads enormously uh novels, books on social issues, history, economics. He’s very cultured and added to that is are the instincts of a really good actor, the observer of human nature.
Sir, that is a direct order from the president. And that is part of a dangerous concept that men of the armed forces owe their primary allegiance to these temporary occupants of the White House instead of to the country and the Constitution were sworn to defend. I have a feeling he would prefer to act a character that’s very different than him because it would offer him him an opportunity to understand a very different kind of person.
Today marks my final roll call with you. I want you to know that when I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of the core. And the core. And the core. I saw one of the most courageous pieces of acting I’d ever seen Greg do when he played The Boys from Brazil, where he played Joseph Mangallay, uh, you know, the one of the most evil men who ever walked the face of the earth.
And I think he loved playing that. Mangallay was a loathome rat. Kill him. One of the most despicable characters in history. I really couldn’t get very close to him emotionally. So I resorted to a lot of technique and that I uh had a a horrible little mustache that seemed to grow out of my nose and I cut my hair back an inch.
I dyed it uh black and I went at Mangal to make him as hateful as I could. Supposed to be a Christian start getting ready to kill Oscarsen. But the great fun of that was working with Lawrence Olivier. That’s really why I did it. Helman, who we had a terrible fight where we clawed each other and yanked each other’s ears and gouged each other, but it was all a lark.
It was all choreographed, two or three moves at a time. And u we just became great pals. He’s a prince. He’s a prince. I love him. He is interested in his friends. He’s not kind of a fly by night friend. He’s there. Greg had come to the house and visited with Boi when he was really ill. And after he died, one day I found a letter that Greg had left.
It was about Bogeie’s death and how he felt about Bogey, how he felt about me and my carrying on uh and my children and um it was very emotional and very sensitive and very open. And Greg is not afraid to write what he feels or to say what he feels, which is rare in a man and a wonderful quality. I’m sure everyone watching has had moments in their lives of of being down and feeling despair and wondering whether you could get through uh that tough period.
And uh that happened to me. There were three wonderful sons born from my first marriage. One of them uh took his own life. I probably not only think of him every day, but every hour. But one learns to go on living. As I look back, I’ve gone to all those premieres and I’ve met everybody. The glitz and the glamour never made much of an impression on me.
The important thing was always the work and the people that became my friends were all people to whom the work was the thing. The reason for this mustache uh is that we’re in Mexico and uh we’re making the old gringo by Carlos Fuentes with director Luis Puenzo and Jane Fonda doing the thing that I love to do.
He comes to the set having thought a scene through from top to bottom. All the different ways of going at it, all the complexities involved with it. There’s something about him that walks this thin line between safe and familiar and warm and welcoming and that which is challenging and dangerous and threatening and sexual and mysterious.
Greg has not lost the hunger to take big risks. And it takes courage because it it’s a lie to think that it gets easier as you get older and easier as you become successful. I think it gets harder, but he never plays it safe. So you add all that together with the incredible looks that are still there.
Just such a handsome man who doesn’t worry about his looks, doesn’t act like someone who cares about it and tall and lanky and suave and likes beautiful women and likes to smell pretty things and likes a nice shape and admits it. And he’s a man. I always go to work in the morning with a feeling of excitement and a challenge and a sense of fun.
Uh here’s a chance to uh fit a few pieces of the mosaic in place in this story that we’re telling and I can hardly wait to get on the set. I fell in love with movie making is what happened and uh I haven’t gotten over that yet. Gregory Peek is perhaps more than anybody I know totally genuine and I think everything comes from the inside whatever part he does and I think he’ll always be remembered for being so real as a human being and as an actor.
He’s a man of extraordinary dimension. I think that I reached out to that audience to try to make contact with them, to try to make friends with them, and to tell them a story that I wanted to tell. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.
Heat. Heat.