Gregory Peck, who parlayed stunning good looks and an image of sterling rectitude into a movie acting career spanning nearly 60 years, has died in his sleep, his spokesman said Thursday. He was 87.
In the years since his movie debut–as a World War II Russian partisan battling Nazis in 1944’s “Days of Glory”–he matured from a striking young matinee idol into one of Hollywood’s most respected actors and best-loved elder statesmen, leaving a string of memorable performances in films such as “Spellbound,” “Roman Holiday” “Gentleman’s Agreement,” “The Gunfighter,” “The Yearling,” “Twelve O’Clock High,” “The Guns of Navarone,” and his own favorite, 1962’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Peck–6 feet 3 inches tall and blessed with a facial structure that could suggest either an adventurer or an ascetic idealist–was often cast as a hero staunchly battling the forces of injustice, oppression or prejudice.
Most unforgettable of all among his 60 film roles was Atticus Finch, the small-town lawyer and compassionate widower-father in “Mockingbird” who courageously defends a black man falsely accused of rape in a turbulent, small Alabama community in the 1930s. Peck won a best actor Oscar for his role in that classic, filmed by director Robert Mulligan from Harper Lee’s equally well-loved novel. And over the years, Finch — a character modeled by Lee on her own father — has come to symbolize the best of the country’s mythical heartland: the ideal parent and perfect, decent American citizen.
Earlier this month, an American Film Institute listing of the top heroes in movie history ranked Peck’s Finch as No. 1.
“I think Gregory Peck’s whole career was defined by that film, because he was the classic, quintessential American hero — a fellow who puts to hazard his whole future in order to do something he believes is right to do,” said Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America.
It was a role Peck took to heart and that he tried to emulate as well in his offscreen activities, donating his services to numerous liberal and humanitarian causes and serving as president of the Motion Picture Academy, chairman of the Motion Picture & Television Relief Fund, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the American Film Institute and chairman of the American Cancer Society.
Peck’s charitable work helped win him another Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, and he was also a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and life achievement awards from the American Film Institute, Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art.
The unflinching and brave Finch is the role that now seems to embody Peck and his movie career.
But in 1962 it seemed somewhat off-type. He had spent nearly two decades as a major star playing a variety of charismatic men of action — from “Captain Horatio Hornblower” in Raoul Walsh’s 1951 film, to King David (opposite Susan Hayward) in Henry King’s 1951 “David and Bathsheba,” to Ernest Hemingway’s African hunters in “The Macomber Affair” (1947) and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (1952) to the rugged westerners of “Yellow Sky” (1948), “The Bravados” (1958) and “The Big Country” (1958), to the commando leader of “The Guns of Navarone” (1961).
Still, the role that had made him a star, in 1944, was far gentler: as the dedicated missionary Father Francis Chisholm in “The Keys of the Kingdom.”
But “Mockingbird” was the high point of his career, one that would have seemed implausible at first. Peck was born Eldred Gregory Peck in April 5, 1916, in La Jolla, Calif., the son of a druggist. His parents divorced when he was 5, and at first, he studied medicine at the University of California-Berkeley, before graduating in 1939 as an English major.
His acting life commenced in his senior year when a campus theater director spotted him and, without an audition, asked him to play the role of stalwart first mate Starbuck in a stage version of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick.” Peck agreed, fell in love with acting and later moved to New York City, dropping the name “Eldred” before he arrived. His Broadway debut in 1942 came in the lead role of Emlyn Williams’ “The Morning Star” and, like Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne, he became a big movie star during World War II — when stars such as Clark Gable, Henry Fonda and James Stewart were overseas. (Peck’s draft status was 4F, unable to serve, because of a spinal injury.)
Strangely enough, “Moby Dick,” as play and as film, bookended Peck’s acting career. His last performance, at 82, was in the 1998 TV film miniseries with Patrick Stewart, with Peck as the eloquent whalers’ parson, Father Mapple. And in 1956, he appeared, controversially, as the obsessed whale-hunter Captain Ahab in John Huston’s film. (At the time, Peck’s Ahab was called miscasting by many — including Peck himself, who always insisted his natural role was Starbuck.)
As with many one-time movie idols, Peck’s later years in the 1970s and beyond were less active and productive — though he had one huge hit, as the father in 1976’s supernatural thriller “The Omen,” and interesting parts as “MacArthur” (1977), as Lincoln in the 1982 TV mini-series “The Blue and the Gray” and as writer Ambrose Bierce in 1989’s “Old Gringo.”
It is mostly for the movies he made in the 1940s to ’60s heyday that we treasure Gregory Peck now: as the high-spirited young reporter romancing princess Audrey Hepburn in William Wyler’s “Roman Holiday” (1953), as the bewildered amnesiac fugitive in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound” (1945), as the farmer-father of “The Yearling” (1946), as the crusading young reporter masquerading as a Jew to expose anti-Semitism in Elia Kazan’s “Gentleman’s Agreement” (1947), as the World War II flight commander on the verge of a crack-up in Henry King’s “Twelve O’Clock High” (1949), as the desperate attorney trying to protect his family from psychopath ex-con Robert Mitchum in “Cape Fear” (1962) or as the aging gunman facing a last shootout in “The Gunfighter” (1950).
That is how we recall him best: as a man graceful and intelligent, brave and indomitable, a perfect-seeming hero in an imperfect world.
Peck was married twice, to Greta Rice and Veronique Passani, and he had five children: Stephen, Carey, Tony, Cecilia and the late Jonathan Peck.
A spokesman for the Peck family, Monroe Friedman, said Peck had not been suffering from any particular ailments before his death at his Los Angeles home, with his wife of 48 years at his side.
Peck will be remembered, along with Spencer Tracy and James Stewart, as one of the American movies’ great fathers — but he will also be remembered as the movie idol who was not content to rest on his good looks and who built his image on impassioned fights for justice.
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Film highlights
* Academy Award
** Academy Award nominations
Days of Glory 1944
**The Keys of the Kingdom 1944
The Valley of Decision 1945
Spellbound 1945
**The Yearling 1946
The Macomber Affair 1947
Duel in the Sun 1946
**Gentleman’s Agreement 1947
The Paradine Case 1948
Yellow Sky 1948
The Great Sinner 1949
**Twelve O’Clock High 1949
The Gunfighter 1950
Only the Valiant 1951
David and Bathsheba 1951
Captain Horatio Hornblower 1951
The Snows of Kilimanjaro 1952
The World in His Arms 1952
Roman Holiday 1953
Night People 1954
The Million-Pound Note or Man
With a Million 1954
The Purple Plain 1954
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit 1956
Moby Dick 1956
Designing Woman 1957
The Bravados 1958
The Big Country 1958
Pork Chop Hill 1959
Beloved Infidel 1959
On the Beach 1959
The Guns of Navarone 1961
*To Kill a Mockingbird 1962
Cape Fear 1962
How the West Was Won 1962
Captain Newman M.D. 1964
Behold a Pale Horse 1964
Mirage 1965
Arabesque 1966
The Stalking Moon 1969
Mackenna’s Gold 1969
The Chairman or The Most Dangerous Man in the World 1969
Marooned 1969
I Walk the Line 1970
Shoot-Out 1971
Billy Two Hats 1974
The Omen 1976
MacArthur 1977
The Boys from Brazil 1978
The Sea Wolves 1980
Amazing Grace and Chuck 1987
Old Gringo 1989
Other People’s Money 1991
Cape Fear 1991
Sources: Associated Press
Chicago Tribune
