by Lynn Haney
Hayward had a field day touting his client as the hottest property in Hollywood. But when it got down to the nitty-gritty of the contracts, Greg once again proved obstinate. He was showing his inner resolve; the tensile strength beneath the gentlemanly surface he exhibited. Before signing, he insisted on clauses permitting him half time on Broadway (something unheard-of for a movie beginner) and he refused to be locked into any one studio. Still, fearful that his popularity wouldn’t last, he let himself in for enough work to keep him hopelessly busy in the studios for a solid seven years. His commitments went like this: four pictures for Fox, four with David O Selznick, four with MGM, and two with Casey Robinson at RKO. These commitments were made in 1944. More commitments followed. According to Time magazine: ‘When the moguls were through shuffling around their pieces of Mr Peck, he was the most owned and least available leading man in Hollywood, and one of the most valuable.’
During this time, Hayward’s wife, the highly gifted and temperamental actress Margaret Sullavan, was pressuring him to give up his talent agency for Broadway production. She hated the agency business. Her opposition was voiced with an electric intensity worthy of her best stage and screen acting. ‘Flesh peddler’ she’d shout when he reached for the phone.
Largely at her insistence, he sold the agency in 1945 at a substantial profit to Dr Jules Stein’s Music Corporation of America to join the more prestigious realm of Broadway producers. For his first attempt, Hayward chose John Hersey’s A Bell for Adano, enlisting Greg as one of the play’s investors. ‘I used to borrow money,’ Greg marveled. ‘Now I’m lending it.’ The play opened on 6 December 1944 at the Cort Theater.
Upon departure from LA, Hayward left Greg with a sterling piece of advice. He urged him to make movies with extremely popular women stars and gain exposure to their vast audiences. Peck’s next movie fit the bill. For The Valley of Decision, he was teamed with a titian-haired Irish beauty named Greer Garson.
Though mostly forgotten today, Greer Garson was a discovery of Louis B Mayer, who carefully nurtured her career, presenting her as the epitome of the MGM star. Garson played stiff-upper-lip types in numerous ‘weepies’. Her films included Goodbye Mr Chips (1939), which won rave reviews and garnered her first nomination as Best Actress, Random Harvest (1942) and Mrs Miniver (1942), a role for which she would be forever known.
In addition to Garson, The Valley of Decision cast included a number of other top Hollywood actors: Donald Crisp, Lionel Barrymore, Gladys Cooper, and Jessica Tandy.
The Valley of Decision is the story of a colleen (Garson) who becomes a servant in a wealthy Pittsburgh industrialist’s home and spends the rest of her life there – as a maid and then married to the son (Peck). Not a great film, but Greg acquitted himself admirably as the scion of a steel-mill fortune. Dressed to the nines, he looked every inch the patrician. Nobody was more pleased than Greta, who despaired over his lack of interest in clothes. She perhaps ignited Greg’s ire by confessing her frustration to a fan magazine: ‘He sometimes wears the same shirt for a month . . . He never wants to comb his hair – and he has a bad habit of leaving his clothes around until you pick them up in self-defense.’
Greg was determined to wring every last drop of wisdom out of the veteran stars on the picture. His number-one teacher was Greer Garson. She showed him the difference between genuine movie stars and all other film actors. True movie stars are always worth watching, no matter how lousy the picture. Garson loved the camera as much as the lens loved her. She was like a reverse voyeur, ravishing the camera. Her power was inescapable. She beamed her way into the audience’s hearts and minds. Greg recalled: ‘When I viewed the rushes I saw how every time I was in a scene with Greer, her face was the only thing you saw. It shone like a luminous moon floating in the center of the screen, and I was just a rather dim figure next to her.’
When Greta watched the movie, she had a different perspective: ‘It’s really a shock to see your husband making love to someone else – in front of thousands of people.’
The Valley of Decision was a box-office hit. Greg garnered more glowing reviews. Newsweek enthused: ‘Gregory Peck impersonates the intense young man with both the authority and the romantic appeal the role requires . . . [he] is established as one of Hollywood’s outstanding leading men.’ The New York Times concurred: ‘Gregory Peck is quietly commanding as the best of the Scott boys.’ Variety also saluted him: ‘He had the personality and ability to hold attention in any scene.’
Now that Greg was a star, the Pecks were invited everywhere. There was a party in Hollywood every night. The magnificent houses would be thrown open, revealing fine rooms with masterpieces on the walls, vivid people laughing and flirting or dancing to the latest tunes.
Much of the Hollywood social life revolved around the studio heads. Jack Warner gave parties at his Beverly Hills estate with huge buffets around the swimming pool, Darryl Zanuck hosted croquet games on his lawn or parties at the beach, and David O Selznick entertained lavishly with his famous Sunday night dinners.
With her natural exuberance, Greta loved dressing up and gliding into a brightly lit room on Greg’s arm. What a feeling it was to sit on somebody’s sofa and watch the door open and a cornucopia of famous faces she had known from childhood sweep in and sometimes walk straight up to her husband.
But women swamped Greg. As his wife, Greta was relegated to the position of appendage. At one gathering, a female sat herself down on the arm of Greg’s chair and started to come on to him. Greta fumed. ‘I was so damn mad there for a minute, I thought I’d hit her.’ Upon reflection, she decided: ‘I should remember a movie star isn’t supposed to have a wife.’
For his part, Greg preferred entertaining at home and his will prevailed. Poker, gin rummy and records stacked high on the phonograph provided the ingredients for a night of fun with their boisterous crowd. While in later years (and with another wife), a gathering chez Gregory Peck meant exquisite French cuisine and the finest wine, in the 1940s it was steaks on the grill barbecued by the host himself. Over at the bar, the hooch flowed freely. In those heady days, drinking was considered an American sport, red blooded, even romantic. Humphrey Bogart boasted: ‘I don’t trust any bastard who doesn’t drink.’ A large man like Greg could metabolize great quantities of alcohol to no apparent detriment. In fact, he was applauded for his ‘hollow legs’. Pint-sized Greta had to be careful. Alcohol works faster on women. What’s more, she was in her fertile years. In fact, a baby was expected to arrive in June 1944.
Fatherhood! Greg was jubilant. As the time drew near, his compulsivity took hold and he laid out plans for the Blessed Event like a general responsible for a military operation. No detail was to be left to chance. He drew a map with five routes from home to hospital and then made practice runs to determine which road was fastest. In anticipation of the child’s homecoming, he sanitized the carpets, walls and furniture. It’s a wonder the floorboards didn’t give way under the weight of all the baby books he purchased.
And once Greg set eyes on his son Jonathan, he became as awestruck as any new father. Greta recalled: ‘Always, between two people, there are moments that one of them will never forget. For me, it’s that time when I saw Greg standing scared and white, holding our just-born son Jonathan in his arms, and afraid to breathe.’ After they took the baby home, Greg studied Jonathan and sighed: ‘I just hope he doesn’t get gangly and bony like I was. Gee, how I used to envy those big-muscled Tarzans on the beach – they got all the girls in sight.’
With the baby home, Greg paid attention to every detail. Greta remembered: ‘The housekeeper told me that Greg made his father take his shoes off before he’d let him set foot in the nursery.’
Even with a new baby, Greg couldn’t slow down. He was hooked on the movie life. Each morning he had the fascinating studio crowd waiting for him. His colleagues were talented, witty and charming. But it was an ephemeral world – and his place in it wasn’t secure. ‘The life span of a movie star is comparatively sh
ort,’ claimed Spencer Tracy. ‘We’re something like the common housefly.’ While the length of Tracy’s career belied that crack, Greg had no guarantees that he would be allowed to stick around beyond the first flush of his fame. The pressure was building. Soon the war would be over and the established actors would be returning home. What’s more, there were a lot of new people coming up, good-looking and young. If he didn’t maximize every opportunity that came his way, he could slip back to obscurity.
Consumed with his career, Greg expected Greta to be in service to his monomania and relentless discipline. Mealtimes, social life and baby schedule had to be worked around his priorities. Yes, it was selfish. All artists are self-centered. If they aren’t ruthless with their energy and time, they won’t fulfill their promise and they’ll be overtaken by the competition.
Still, the long hours and his fragile ego made Greg tense, withdrawn and angry. Greta took the brunt of it. He raged. She raged. It was a contentious household. ‘Both of us have quick tempers,’ Greta admitted, ‘and an argument can get going a mile a minute even before we know what it’s about.’
Despite their ups and downs, Greg loved Greta and regarded her as his staunchest ally. On weeknights, she listened patiently while he recited his lines for the next day’s shoot. When he went to bed, the stress of his career took its toll in fitful sleep but he could count on her to be there beside him. ‘Greta helped me,’ he later recalled, ‘not to beat my brains out.’ Frequently depressed, he experienced ‘moments that others might describe as a nervous breakdown.’
To gear up for another day’s work Greg adopted a peculiar morning ritual. He admitted to Mary Morris of PM magazine he gulped down a raw egg floating in sherry. (Eye openers were not unusual in Hollywood. W C Fields started each day with two double martinis before breakfast. When someone suggested he try water, the gravel-voiced, bulbous-nosed curmudgeon scowled, ‘Fish fuck in it!’)
Prodding Greg about his sherry-egg concoction, Morris asked: ‘What’s the point?’ ‘It’s quick – booming, boom,’ he said. Then he added: ‘Never had time to spend on breakfast and, besides, I get up feeling fuzzy, can’t face real eating for several hours.’
Greg’s next film, Spellbound (1945), promised him enough adrenaline-pumping excitement to make sherry superfluous. Conceived as a psychological thriller, it portrays a romance between an amnesiac (Peck) and a frosty, generally unbending psychiatrist (Ingrid Bergman).
Spellbound brought together a formidable constellation of talent. The producer was two-time Oscar-winner David O Selznick, who had been undergoing psychoanalysis at the time and even hired his shrink as technical advisor. To direct, Selznick selected Alfred Hitchcock, who had made Rebecca (1940) for him and was already cementing his reputation as the Master of Suspense. To do the screenwriting, he chose Ben Hecht. A facile and prolific storyteller who completed most scripts in two weeks, never more than eight, Hecht was generally believed to be the highest-paid screenwriter of his day. He claimed: ‘The job of turning good writers into movie hacks is the producer’s chief task.’ To create dream sequences that would be both psychologically astute and visually mesmerizing, Selznick hired the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. All in all, Spellbound was going to be as innovative a production as Hollywood had ever seen.
In the movie, Ingrid Bergman is convincing as the intense iceberg psychiatrist, Dr Constance Peterson, who is sexually awakened by Greg as her institute’s new chief, Dr Anthony Edwardes. She finds herself embroiled in a murder mystery revolving about him. An imposter suffering from amnesia, Greg is everybody’s prime suspect. But through a combination of love, psychological technique, and persistence, Bergman cracks his amnesia and solves the crime.
The picture includes some beautiful scenes. One of them is the first meeting between Gregory and Bergman clearly love at first sight. For such a scene to work, it’s important that the male and female leads are attracted to each other. In real life when two appealing people meet the moment is not so charged with titillating expectation. They just meet, and the moment usually passes. But people in films carry another aura around with them. A film costing millions can depend on the chemistry between two people who will be spending every waking hour together for at least three or four months. Selznick and Hitchcock must have been heartened to witness the sexual heat building between their co-stars. Hitchcock once quipped: ‘All love scenes started on the set are continued in the dressing room after the day’s shooting is done. Without exception.’
Bergman was then 29 and in full bloom. Tall, fresh-faced and fun-loving, she didn’t need ever-flattering lighting, the make-up people hiding imperfect skin, or a hairdresser to make her hair look sexy. Already the recipient of an Oscar for Gaslight in 1944, she could project an image of purity and pristine magic.
When Greg met her, he was not only struck by her beauty but he also picked up on her lively sense of humor. To break the ice he joked about how his multiple studio contracts had prepared him for Spellbound. ‘You know I am perfectly cast as the guy with a split personality, because I am split four ways – between David Selznick, RKO, Twentieth Century Fox and International.’
At first Bergman wasn’t happy about playing opposite a leading man who was slightly younger than she was, but once they started rehearsing it was obvious they were simpatico. Ingrid loved to woo, and charm, and win over her leading men. She knew that an actress can only be fertile if she renews herself. And there is no more fruitful source of this than the enchanting exploration of another human being, particularly one as virile as Gregory Peck.
For Greg, Bergman was not only one of the world’s most beautiful women; she was also a mentor, extending a helping hand at a time when he sorely needed it. Much more experienced about acting before the camera, she aided him in accessing his deeply repressed emotions. As her character says in the movie: ‘We are bundles of inhibitions.’
The intense sexual magnetism between the leading actors raised eyebrows on the set. After all, the stars each had a spouse at home. According to one cast member: ‘Ingrid and Peck came in late and disheveled, and there was a lot of speculation.’ All Greg would admit to was, ‘I loved her.’ When pressed for details, he’d back off saying, ‘I don’t talk about things like that.’
Peck was fortunate to have an ally like Bergman as he stumbled – sometimes quite literally – through the film. One of the pivotal scenes in Spellbound required Greg to follow Ingrid Bergman on skis down a steep snow-covered slope. He didn’t ski at all and Bergman, though Swedish, was a rank beginner. For long shots, Hitchcock used doubles. But there were a number of scenes requiring medium shots and close-ups.
To solve the problem, carpenters constructed a 40-foot-high slope made of gypsum and cornflakes (sprayed white). All Greg and Bergman had to do was stay vertical while the camera focused on them. The close-ups were shot in front of a rear projection screen showing lofty mountains and crisp clean snow. Greg had to stay in character as the confused amnesiac shouting loudly enough to alarm the audience and to convince his psychiatrist that he was really becoming unhinged and about to kill her, and ski into a clump of mattresses.
Despite tremendous effort, Greg couldn’t get the hang of skiing, thus forcing Hitchcock to re-shoot the scene several times. ‘The memory is painful to me – even now,’ Greg confessed years later. ‘I fell down sideways, forward, on my rear – and every possible way – before I actually managed to stay up for the 40-foot run. You can imagine my relief when I got to the bottom.’
Greg’s relationship with Alfred Hitchcock was tricky. Hitchcock once said: ‘My favorite is the actor who can do nothing well. By that I mean one who has presence, authority and can attract attention without actually doing anything.’ His deft timing and sharp, imaginative camera work could do the rest. He also expected them to have developed a persona that was immediately recognizable to the audience. (Cary Grant is an excellent example of a Hitchcock actor.)
Greg, an alumnus of the Neighborhood Playhouse and a disciple of the S
tanislavsky or ‘Method’ school of acting, was somewhat disdainful of Hitchcock’s ‘clever shell games’. At the same time, he was doing everything he could to meet Hitchcock’s high expectations. ‘I felt I needed a good deal of direction,’ Peck said, ‘but when he asked for assistance, Hitchcock wasn’t forthcoming. ‘My dear boy,’ he replied in answer to a question about motivation, ‘I couldn’t care less what you’re thinking. Just let your face drain of all expression.’
Despite Hitchcock’s lack of specific acting pointers, Greg found him clever and ingenious. ‘He was full of jokes and quips and puns,’ Greg recalled. ‘I always thought of him a little bit as an overweight English schoolboy with some obvious complexes but with this uncanny talent for building suspense and holding an audience in the palm of his hand.’
The Pecks entertained the Hitchcocks and the invitations were returned. A connoisseur of food and drink, Hitchcock regarded Greg as a bumpkin. Because he found it pitiable that Greg didn’t know about good wines, he sent him a case of 12 vintage bottles including Montrachet and Lafite-Rothschild with instructions attached to each bottle explaining the kinds of food to serve them with. Greg drank the whole case and tossed out the labels.
David O Selznick liked to say: ‘Nothing in Hollywood is permanent. Once photographed, life here is ended.’ And so it went for the romance of the two Spellbound stars. When the film wrapped in mid October 1944, Bergman lost interest in Greg. Her love ’em and leave ’em attitude had been established with other leading men. Gary Cooper, with whom she made two movies, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) and Saratoga Trunk (1945), complained out loud about being spurned. ‘In my whole life I never had a woman so much in love with me as Ingrid was,’ Cooper said years later. ‘The day after the picture ended I couldn’t get her on the phone.’