by Lynn Haney
Principal photography for The Keys of the Kingdom got underway on 15 November 1943. It was shot in three months entirely on the studio lot. Greg came to the set the first day knowing the script from the opening scene to the final fade-out. With a few acting friends he had already played out the role so that he not only had perfected the lines and memorized the cues, but he had the whole personality of Father Chisholm deeply engraved in his psyche. Still, his idea of a priest came from the provincial, narrowly educated immigrant Irish clerics who oversaw his spiritual training at St John’s Military School. He couldn’t quite grasp how Father Chisholm broke through to the Chinese.
Fortunately, Fox, like other studios, relied heavily on consultants, offering employment to large numbers of people with a great variety of skills – all in the service of manufacturing dreams. In Peck’s case, they brought in Father Albert O’Hara, a Jesuit priest who had spent several years as a missionary in China and spoke the language fluently. Renowned for their scholarship in every conceivable field as well as for being saintly (41 saints and 285 blesseds), the Jesuits had been sending missionaries to China since 1583. The order was very receptive to the customs and values of the Chinese civilization. They took the daring step in China of trying to integrate Confucian values and Chinese cultural traditions with the Gospel message.
In Father O’Hara, Greg saw ‘that grave courtesy and respect for each person as an individual.’ The two became close friends and correspondents until the priest’s death in Taiwan. Over the years Greg served as a stalwart fundraiser for the priest’s missions. And the input of Father O’Hara on Greg’s characterization worked well enough to impress the author of the novel – no mean task. A J Cronin marveled: ‘I just can’t understand how any actor could so well catch the clumsiness in the beauty of Father Chisholm’s character.’
As the pre-film publicity machine for The Keys of the Kingdom got underway, Greg’s 4-F draft status presented a major problem. In newspaper photographs and at weekly newsreels shown at the movies, Americans saw brave GIs getting their legs, arms and heads shot off. These boys were defeating tyranny, freeing oppressed people. So why was a healthy-looking physical specimen like Gregory Peck sitting out the war? Zanuck was not about to let the public know Greg suffered an injury in anything as ‘sissified’ as a dancing class, so he put out a release explaining that the very masculine actor injured his back while starring on Berkeley’s rowing team.
The fudging on Greg’s résumé was standard procedure at the studios. In his autobiography The Moon’s a Balloon, David Niven recalled being called in by Jock Lawrence, the head of publicity at MGM. The discussion went as follows:
‘Mother?’
‘French.’
‘Good, we can use that. Father?’
‘Killed in the war.’
‘Great! What rank?’
‘Lieutenant.’
‘Jesus, that’s terrible. We’d better make him a general.’ A general he became.
Although he was undoubtedly aware of Zanuck’s dark side, Greg – ever conscious of building his own long career – accepted the tycoon’s famously vulgar personality and recognized him as an artiste among businessmen. Of the Hollywood creative studio heads, Zanuck lasted the longest. At the end of his career, he had close to 1,000 movies to his credit; he painstakingly crafted (working at an extraordinary level of detail) an unprecedented string of noteworthy, and unusually successful, films, from All About Eve (1950) to The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and How Green Was My Valley (1941).
Greg, who counted organization among the cardinal virtues, admired Zanuck’s efficiency and his uncanny instincts. Zanuck led script conferences to improve story lines, characterizations, and sequences of action, and he frequently dictated new scenes for the writers to fill out. His personal energy and acumen were expressed in his constant exhortation to make the scripts as concise as possible and to move the action along quickly. If the script didn’t do it, Zanuck, who supervised postproduction equally closely, would re-cut the film accordingly. He believed action – even if wrong –– was sometimes better than no action at all.
Rather than being put off by a hard taskmaster with rough edges, Greg did his best to ensure the two of them would have a long working relationship. And since Greg stayed in the game so long, he saw the advantages of this connection trickle down to the next generation.
During a break in filming, Greg recalled noticing a youngster, about eight years old, with tousled hair and dirty sneakers, hanging around the shoeshine stand and helping himself to a Coca-Cola. ‘Who’s that kid?’ He wondered out loud.
‘That kid is going to grow up to be your boss. His name is Dickie Zanuck,’ was the prophetic retort. When Greg returned to Fox in the 1960s to film The Chairman, Richard Zanuck Jr greeted him warmly.
With a $3 million price tag, The Keys of the Kingdom did not earn back its costs. Nonetheless, it vaulted Greg to the top ranks of Hollywood’s male heroes. He earned his first Best Actor Oscar nomination, yet he would lose that award to Ray Milland for The Lost Weekend. Though Greg earned just $750 a week for his starring role, Zanuck gave him a $25,000 bonus for the Oscar nomination. With the release of The Keys of the Kingdom Greg burst through on to the public consciousness. The role of Father Chisholm established him as a man of honor and deep spirituality. ‘I was beyond good guy,’ he recalled. ‘I was a walking saint.’
The Keys of the Kingdom has not held up as well as many other films in Peck’s repertoire. Viewing it years later, critic Pauline Kael derisively tagged it ‘Hollywood at its most virtuous.’ About Greg, she carped: ‘His saintliness comes across as lack of imagination – utter sterility.’ Then she added: ‘This is perhaps the most dignified and sexless performance ever given by a rising male star.’
Maybe so, but in 1944 thousands of women found Greg irresistible. Fan mail poured in from females hell-bent on defrocking him. ‘Please let me spend a night with you,’ wrote an ardent female. ‘You can do what you will with me.’ Ever the gentleman, Greg instructed his secretary to write each one a polite note saying: ‘Sorry, I’m all booked up.’
Hollywood had its own social hierarchy, a rigorously observed caste system. It wasn’t noticeable in the daytime, when stars and extras worked side by side in the studios. But at night, social life was rigidly structured according to the weekly salary checks. The stars invited stars, or producers, directors and writers. Ticket to admission: success. Said Hedda Hopper: ‘Our town worships success, the bitch goddess whose smile hides a taste for blood.’
A good pretext for a party was somebody’s return from overseas service. In 1945 Greg and Greta lined up at one shindig for a picture of a glowing Ronald Reagan with his wife Jane Wyman celebrating his safe return from the war. Of those times, Greta said: ‘It was grand. I bought clothes like crazy. I’m the saving kind by nature. It’s the Finn in me, I guess. But Greg said I had to get clothes and he gave me the nicest mink coat.’ Thriving on people, Greta found these occasions thrilling.
Greg didn’t enjoy big splashy parties. He liked picnics with Greta and long walks in the woods near their home. ‘It was absolutely wonderful out there then,’ recalled Greg’s friend Harry Carey, Jr. ‘Anybody who was anybody lived there. Robert Taylor lived just up the road. So did Jean Arthur, and John Charles Thomas, the great baritone. Shirley Temple and her handsome husband, John Agar, were just a mile away – and so was Joan Crawford, Gary Cooper, Claude Rains and Pat O’Brien. On Tigertail Road, you could see Henry Fonda with little Jane riding behind him on his tractor as he plowed his land. Gregory Peck was up on the hill, and Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer live further up on Mandeville Canyon.’ When the couple entertained, Greg preferred backyard barbecues and raucous drinking sessions with his buddies, Robert Mitchum and Burl Ives.
During the mid-1940s, Burl Ives was best known as a wandering minstrel. Due to tax problems, he found it expedient not to have a fixed address. He would travel from town to town, and sometimes from house to house, singing ribald ballads in hi
s distinctive voice. He popularized songs such as ‘Foggy Foggy Dew’, ‘Blue-tailed Fly’, ‘I Know an Old Lady’ and ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’.
One weekend he came for a Saturday night party at the Peck’s and slept most of the following Sunday in time to take part in a slightly less raucous gathering in the evening. Greg had to report at the studio at 7.30 Monday morning. When he returned, Ives was still there, curled up on the carpet, looking, Greg recalled, like a beached whale. Ives left on Tuesday.
The verbal jousting and parrying at elegant Hollywood parties tested Greg’s reticent nature. Not one to whom conversation came naturally, he paused frequently between sentences to think out what he was going to say. Most of the time he keep his comments to a bare minimum. A friend suggested it was because he was terrified of the community’s smart set. Peck didn’t want to fall victim to the snare of trying to say something scintillating and having it fall flat. He admitted, ‘When I get mixed up with Nunnally Johnson or Herman Mankiewicz or Ben Hecht, I am struck dumb.’ Katharine Hepburn, who suffered from the same problem, commented: ‘I think many actors are very shy, but they have a strong urge to express themselves or to hide behind the characters they play.’
But at the same time, Greg relished the intellectual stimulation of rubbing shoulders with talented people – and listening hard to what they had to say. In the 1940s, Hollywood parties boasted an abundant supply of the avant-garde. Ambitious hostesses gathered artists, writers, designers, and, of course, directors and actors about them in their fabulous houses. You seldom saw anybody at their gatherings who wasn’t a star in his field. The rooms rang with knowledgeable talk about paintings, design, sculpture, collecting antiques, owning thoroughbreds – and Peck was absorbing it and would later bring the information to bear on his own lifestyle.
As a hedge against gatherings he would have preferred to skip, Greg tried to arrange it so the couple would be the last to arrive and the first to leave. Tinseltown affairs had a way of getting out of hand: somebody jumping in the pool; men tossing punches at each other; an actor’s wife and girlfriend squabbling; strangers meeting and disappearing together; stray guests falling asleep on couches and leaving at daylight. Lord knows, Greg loved merriment and the opportunity to hoist a few, but he was learning the price of prominence. If he got blitzed and made a spectacle, the story would take on a life of its own.
For some bashes it was wise to leave hat and coat in the car. That way you could exit at a reasonable hour without calling attention to yourself. George Sanders, a British actor known for playing both leading men and suave cads, followed this rule and often made his way swiftly upstairs and escaped through the bathroom window. He claimed: ‘I got to know a lot of bathrooms like that; the best was undoubtedly Greer Garson’s. It was all done in pink marble, and had a huge glass wall, which opened on to a private garden. It was the biggest production for the smallest audience that Hollywood ever achieved.’
Yet, when it came to the legendary names, Greg was happy to stick around. ‘I certainly admired the big stars,’ he said. ‘They were not stars for no reason, you know. They were stars because they were so damn interesting.’
One evening in 1946, Gary Cooper sidled up to Greg and introduced himself. Cooper was 44 years old, still handsome, but the early sensuality of his face had been replaced by a weathered, granite appearance, accentuated by iron-gray hair. He walked slowly, spoke deliberately and was in full possession of his unassailable dignity.
By the time Greg met him, Gary Cooper had been in films for 20 years, a star for 16, and among the top box-office attractions for 10. Some of his movies were the best ever made. He was a folk hero, an American symbol to be cherished almost as much as apple pie and motherhood. As Carl Sandburg put it, Cooper was ‘One of the most beloved illiterates this country has ever known.’
‘How many movies have you made?’ Cooper asked.
‘Two,’ Greg responded.
‘How’d they turn out?’
‘One good, one bad.’
‘You’re ahead of the game,’ Cooper replied. Then he said, ‘Don’t worry if you get a few flops. You’ll be lucky if you have two good movies out of every five.’
Good advice. But Greg may well have asked himself: Do I want to turn out like Gary Cooper? The film icon was a cautionary tale both professionally and personally.
Certainly there was much for Greg to admire in Cooper’s screen image. The quintessential strong, silent type, he performed exciting deeds and left the talking to his admirers. He could make a moral choice seem a matter of real immediate moment.
Cooper’s explanation for his success was: ‘To get folks to like you, I figured you sort of had to be their ideal. I don’t mean a handsome knight riding a white horse, but a fellow who answered the description of a right guy.’
Greg liked the idea of that kind of public adulation, but he also wanted to be taken seriously. His idols were Barry Fitzgerald, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy and Walter Huston. These men took risks to stretch their talents and they refused to be pigeonholed.
Cooper’s success – like that of Cary Grant and Clark Gable – sprang from his looks, personality and animal magnetism. The public assumed he didn’t work at his acting. For his part, Cooper downplayed the discipline and perfectionism required to play himself. If complimented for a serious role, such as his Academy Award winning Sergeant York (1941), he’d dismiss the praise with an endearing excuse: ‘It’s a cinch. I just learn my lines and try not to bump into the furniture.’ At the same time, many of those in the movie business reinforced the image of Cooper as an uncomplicated natural. Director King Vidor said: ‘He got a reputation as a great actor just by thinking hard about his next line.’ Playing opposite him in Cloak and Dagger (1946), Lilli Palmer recounted: ‘Cooper could deliver a long speech on camera while rummaging in his pocket for a cigarette, continue talking while he fiddled with matches, pause for moment of what looked like intense concentration, pick up where he left off, put the matches away, rub his nose, and go on talking as if the camera didn’t exist.’
The major studios deliberately set about creating a distinctive public style for each star. Such perception played a large part in Cooper being cast in roles in the latter part of his career that made him look like a caricature of himself; the same held true for Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne.
Greg may also have been put off by the tawdry stories about Cooper’s tumultuous love affairs. At a time in his own life when he was struggling to build a good marriage with Greta while fending off the advances of eager women, he knew he could easily find himself the target of unfavorable publicity. Some paramours don’t know when to keep quiet, such as Cooper’s girlfriend, Clara Bow, who combined awesome vitality with childlike vulnerability. ‘I like him very much,’ she assured the press corps. ‘He always lets me take my dog in the tub when he gives me my bath in the morning.’
CHAPTER SIX
Leading Ladies
‘I’ll tell you about these men. They were monsters and pirates and bastards right down to the bottom of their feet, but they loved movies. They loved making movies, they loved seeing movies and they protected the people who worked for them.’
Director Richard Brooks on the Hollywood moguls
Greg’s next film was shot at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), a place where talent, enthusiasm and virtually limitless financial support made almost anything possible. The studio, which looked like an academy with Georgian columns and a Georgian façade, was known as ‘The Tiffany of the business’ and boasted ‘More Stars Than There Are in Heaven.’ MGM was not only the premier movie factory; it was very much a city unto itself.
Eventually, MGM’s Culver City property covered six lots, encompassing 180 acres. All the filmmaking trades – make-up, art direction, set and property construction, special effects and publicity – reached new heights at MGM. The studio’s stated goal of turning out a film a week was seldom met, but it often managed three releases a month.
In the
studio commissary, Greg sometimes caught sight of Louis B Mayer, the man who had cried when he turned down his contract offer. Now Greg watched the most powerful and feared mogul of them all sitting with his employees eating chicken soup. Here was a man who knew how to develop stars. He cared, was formidably organized, and treated the stars well – as long as they stayed in line. Canadian actor Walter Pigeon who specialized in distinguished and gentlemanly roles recalled: ‘I was like a kept woman during my 21 years at MGM. Hollywood was like an expensive, beautifully run club. You didn’t need to carry money. Your face was your credit card – all over the world.’
Mayer exercised all the passions fiercely. He could love and he could hate. He could help you or hurt you badly. Greg spoke well of Mayer and made sure he stayed on the producer’s good side – without getting mowed over. He noted: ‘I think Mayer gained a great respect for me as a result of my haggling with him, because over the years to come he never once held it against me.’
Biographer Bosley Crowther took a darker view of the tycoon, calling him ‘a man whose tapeworm ego had to be fed by driving activity, ruthless use of power, and adventures with beautiful women.’ Director Jules Dessin was leery of Mayer’s expansive paternalism. ‘To me, Louis B Mayer’s arm around your shoulder meant his hand was closer to your throat.’
For psychological reasons as well as career expediency, Greg viewed Mayer in a good light – just as he did Zanuck. He didn’t look up to these tyrants as models of integrity the way he did his father, but he saw them as blazing successes. They were romantic devils; men who loved the movies and had the balls to reach out and grab what they wanted. While his father resigned himself to working nights in a drugstore he didn’t own, these men survived, prevailed and flourished.