Gregory Peck- A Charmed Life

by Lynn Haney

  It posed the question: what happens when a successful member of the middle-class community of a fashionable town applies to join a local club that has an unwritten ban against blacks and Jews? Everyone thinks he is WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), but he turns out to be Jewish. The title of the film was taken from the concept of the unwritten ‘gentleman’s agreement’ that keep religious prejudices alive in every area of life.

  Cary Grant refused the role because he contended he was Jewish and he thought he looked Jewish. He maintained: ‘The public won’t believe my portrayal of a gentile trying to pass himself off as a Jew.’ After that, Greg’s agent, George Chasin, told him it would be too risky. ‘This is going to hang around your neck,’ Chasin said. ‘People are going to think you’re a Jew for the rest of your career.’ Greg rejected this advice because he was impressed with the quality of the script and he felt it was the right thing to do. ‘I know it’s good to get the subject out in the open,’ he contended. ‘Entertainment is all right, but entertainment with an idea behind it is much more important. It’s time the industry took a stand on a lot of things; instead of hanging on the tail of public opinion, we should be leading it.’

  Darryl Zanuck harbored a burning desire to make a breakthrough film. In the case of a movie about anti-Semitism, he had a personal reason to hand over $75,000 for the rights to Laura Z Hobson’s best-selling novel on which the film was based. Although one of the few movie moguls who was not Jewish (insiders referred to Fox as the goy studio), he had an experience as a young man starting out in Hollywood in which he was the target of just the kind of antiSemitism portrayed in the novel.

  When one works in the film industry, assumptions are made. How could Zanuck be in the same business as Zukor, Mayer, Cohn and Warner and not be Jewish? Yet, he clearly wasn’t. He was born in Nebraska, on the plains, a second-generation middle-class American. It was a white, Episcopalian-Methodist upbringing. Still, when he applied for membership to the exclusive Los Angeles Athletic Club, he was turned down. He learned from an inside source the reason: no Jews. Ignoring the bigoted rules of the club, he persisted and obtained membership. But the incident of his initial rejection and the outrage he felt at the time were never forgotten. Zanuck stashed it away in his fertile brain, and later on, when he had more power, when the climate was more suitable, he used it.

  Now, one would think in a town built by Jews – junkmen, cobblers, pelt traders and glove salesmen – who had fled the shtetls, the ghettos where Jews were confined in Eastern Europe, in search of something better, that prejudice would not be tolerated. Not so. One day Zanuck was confronted by a group of powerful Hollywood Jews – Sam Goldwyn among them – who pressured him not to make the film. ‘We’re doing fine,’ they argued. ‘Why stir up trouble?’

  Their opposition ignored the prejudice around them. For example, no Hollywood star could have a Jewish name. Princeton, Dartmouth and other colleges supported Jewish quotas. On the floor of the House of Representatives, Republican John Rankin called radio commentator Walter Winchell a ‘kike.’ This attack triggered a standing ovation. The prejudice was then both cruel and pervasive.

  Still, the fact remained Zanuck wasn’t a Jew and vulnerable to the particular kind of prejudice the studio bosses were coming up against. The studio bosses had to get their films approved by Joseph Breen, a professional Catholic who was the driving force behind the Motion Picture Production Code that censored the content and image of Hollywood films. According to Mick LaSalle, author of Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood (2001), Breen was an anti-Semite, who repeatedly called Jews ‘lice’ and ‘the scum of the earth.’ In various letters and memos, Breen referred to Jews as ‘a dirty, filthy lot,’ ‘a foul bunch, crazed with sex . . . and ignorant in all matters having to do with sound morals,’ and ‘simply a vile bunch of people with no respect for anything but the making of money.’

  At the end of the meeting with the Hollywood Jews who sought to advise him, Zanuck told them to mind their own business. He was equally adamant with Catholics who opposed the film because the female lead was divorced, yet romantically involved with the hero.

  And if Zanuck was to get away with that, the movie just had to be a box-office success, because he knew that if he failed with this one, his Board of Directors would refuse to give him a second chance with another. He pointed out that Gentleman’s Agreement represented a double challenge to him: ‘the subject on one side and the utter necessity for an exciting lively drama on the other side.’

  The tale of intolerance told in Gentleman’s Agreement is built on a simple premise about living in someone else’s skin. It’s the story of Phil Green (Peck), a non-Jewish magazine writer who assumes a Jewish identity for six months to gather material, write a series of articles, and better understand discrimination and anti-Semitism. The primary setting is New York City at the end of the Second World War. Green has moved to Manhattan from California, taking a staff job at Smith’s Weekly magazine. At first he is stumped by the assignment he’s given to write a long story on anti-Semitism. Then – flash! – Christian that he is, he’ll simply pretend to be Jewish like his best friend Dave Goldman (John Garfield) and see what happens.

  At work, only his editor, John Minify (Albert Dekker) knows about the ruse. Although Smith’s has a decidedly liberal slant, Green quickly discovers an undercurrent of religious discrimination in the office. He is told he’s ‘too sensitive’ or ‘too pushy’ or ‘that way’. Only the rag’s spunky women’s editor Anne Dettrey (Celeste Holm) treats him like one of the gang. Even Green’s secretary, Miss Wales (June Havoc), is overtly anti-Semitic – and she is Jewish.

  Worse perhaps is Minify’s niece Kathy (Dorothy McGuire). Green falls for her immediately and they get engaged. Turns out Kathy suggested the anti-Semitism series to Minify. Yet she owns a comfy weekend cottage on her sister’s (Jane Wyatt) large property in Darien, Connecticut – and respects the ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’ that keeps Jews out. She is a moral waffler.

  With his characteristic efficiency, Zanuck set about assembling the Gentleman’s Agreement team. He chose Method-driven Elia Kazan to direct and Moss Hart, one of America’s top playwrights, to do the screenplay. Hart wrote his first play as a teenage office boy working for producer/manager Augustus Pitou. His big break came when he collaborated with George S Kaufman on the hit comedy Once in a Lifetime. However, Hart’s screenplay for Gentleman’s Agreement does not show him at the top of his game; the dialogue sounds as if it were written for the stage and the message about anti-Semitism is delivered in a too self-righteous fashion.

  The two other leading stars in the movie – Dorothy McGuire and John Garfield – quickly became good friends of Greg as the production got underway. McGuire arrived in Hollywood from Broadway and stayed on to play vulnerable, intelligent and steadfast women. John Garfield’s star rose during the Depression era movies. There was an attractive roughness about his persona combined with a social conscience that matched those difficult times. Celeste Holm was a talented actress from stage on her way to becoming a major dramatic film star and a superb comedian.

  Elia Kazan – known as Gadge – began the film with a bias against Greg. And working on the movie didn’t change his opinion. He was disappointed with the casting of Greg, seeing him as the quintessential WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). And then when they began to work together, he was sorry to realize that even with his Sanford Meisner training, Greg couldn’t go deep enough. As a result, concluded Kazan, the film didn’t have ‘the intimate experience of someone who has been through the bitter and humiliating experience.’

  Greg tried to get in Kazan’s good graces at the time, and, since then, he always spoke well of him. ‘Not only does he rehearse more than most directors,’ said Greg, ‘but we’d get together in his trailer to break down and analyze the script ahead of time, just like in the theater. And the man is fairly loaded with ideas . . .’. Yet, when Kazan tried to get him to punch the wall in frustration à la Brando o
r Newman, Peck just couldn’t do it. They never worked together after Gentleman’s Agreement.

  Kazan preferred working with John Garfield who was cast as an explicitly Jewish character for the first time in his career. Garfield played Green’s childhood friend, Dave Goldman, who arrives to enlighten the journalist’s journey into the heart of anti-Semitism. Born Jacob Julies Garfinkle, John Garfield changed his name when he signed a contract with Warner Brothers. He took a supporting role in Gentleman’s Agreement because he believed so strongly in the film’s purpose – to expose anti-Semitism. ‘He had a smoldering, somber, troubled, street-guy kind of presence that was incredibly attractive,’ said actress Lee Grant.

  After the picture was released, Kazan concluded that Garfield was ‘experientially right for his role.’ Of the actors involved in the film, he thought him ‘the best of the lot . . . with a maturity he hadn’t shown before. When he finally appeared on the screen, halfway through the action, it was a relief.’

  Dean Stockwell – who specialized in ‘sensitive child’ roles – gave a winning performance as Greg’s young son. Yet he has few happy memories of making the film. To evoke tears from Stockwell for a crying scene, Kazan urged him to concentrate on a puppy dying. ‘I didn’t want to think of dead puppies, for Christ’s sake,’ said Stockwell. ‘And I got the idea that Gregory Peck didn’t like working with a kid. You know that old axiom in Hollywood, “avoid working with kids or dogs.” For that reason I didn’t feel much warmth from him.’

  Scenes for the movie were shot on location in Darien, Connecticut. It had been a sought-after residential community since the turn-of-the-century. The town was only 38 miles east of Manhattan, about an hour by train from midtown. A suburban paradise, it boasted rolling hills, substantial houses and exclusive clubs – beach clubs, hunt clubs, yacht clubs, tennis clubs and golf clubs.

  In Darien, ‘gentleman’s agreements’ between landowners excluding Jews from buying property were securely in place until well into the 1950s. But the enclave welcomed the film stars, and the Darien Review reported:

  Hollywood came to Darien on Monday when the tall, handsome Gregory Peck and slender and pretty Dorothy McGuire enacted a scene at the Darien railroad station. Elia Kazan, who directed Boomerang (1927), which was filmed in Stamford recently, was in charge of the proceedings. The scene is a minor one for the film Gentleman’s Agreement, a story of real estate dealings.

  In March 1986, New England Monthly published an article titled ‘The Town as Private Club’ by Richard Todd who had grown up in Darien. He wrote: ‘It would be an error to think of Darien solely in terms of its clubs, yet club life symbolizes the town, and indeed the town itself is a kind of club. Success may be a journey, but for many, Darien is a destination. It is a place that like a club seems to have honorific powers; it affirms one’s sense of self.’

  He found that while the practice of ‘gentleman’s agreement’ had died out, there were few Jewish residents. The town had 12 churches but no temples. ‘This is a game reserve for the white and the wealthy,’ Diana Barnard, managing editor of the Darien News- Review, told Todd. ‘Thank God for Gentleman’s Agreement and all the filmmakers and writers and artists who have taken a stand against intolerance.’

  Journalist Kinny Littlefield grew up in Darien and felt she had lived ‘gentleman’s agreement’ her whole young life: ‘With “Gentleman’s Agreement”, my hometown made the movies – in a sad and embarrassing way.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Kinny Littlefield, ‘if you were casting a preachy sort you couldn’t do better than Gregory Peck . . . Moody, bitchy, given to smug self-righteousness – Peck makes the perfect neurotic compulsive journalist, just as he made the perfect obsessive compulsive Captain Ahab in Moby Dick.’

  Cautious about public reaction, Fox kept the lid on the film with only the barest description of its content: ‘Now it comes to the screen with nothing left unsaid, with no emotion unstirred.’ On the other hand, a Fox press release provides the link between bigotry in America and the Jewish experience at the hands of the Nazis: ‘Phil finds prejudice cropping up fast. Flicks here and flicks there are the insult constantly on the nerves. No yellow arm bands, no marked park benches, no Gestapo, no torture chambers – just a flicks here and flicks there.’

  The studio needn’t have worried. When Gentleman’s Agreement was eventually shown, it became not only one of the big box-office hits of the year, but proved to be a prestige success as well, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members recognized that fact by awarding it several Oscars. Greg and Dorothy McGuire both lost in the Best Actor and Best Actress category but there were three wins – Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Celeste Holm) and best director (Elia Kazan). (Holm refused to remain at the same salary at Fox since her option called for a raise. Zanuck broke the contract. Then, according to Holm, ‘he called every other studio and said he had fired me because I was too difficult to work with.’) The Hollywood Reporter called Gentleman’s Agreement ‘the most spellbinding story ever put on celluloid.’

  Surprisingly, years later Kazan had trouble remembering it: ‘[In] Hollywood, it was a producer’s game. I’ve been wondering why the store of my memory on Gentleman’s Agreement is so bare. Although Darryl carried off the Oscar for best picture and I for direction, there is very little I have to say about how it was made. A model of big-studio production, it was perfect of its kind, which means it had no face, only faces, those in a group photograph: the faces of Darryl Zanuck and Twentieth Century Fox’s department heads. The production was perfectly managed by Zanuck, with an energy that never relaxed and a determination that on every shooting day he’d get the best out of everyone working.’

  If the principal character had been played by someone less clean cut and Caucasian than Greg, reasoned Kazan, the problem presented by the movie might have been more honestly and frankly confronted. He found Greg ‘sober, worthy, no way mysterious, completely straight, no surprises.’

  Gentleman’s Agreement became a landmark film about the evils of anti-Semitism. It helped establish Greg in the public mind as a stand-up person who was not afraid to fight for his beliefs. In later years, the actor recalled the movie with pride and conviction. ‘We felt we were brave pioneers exploring anti-Semitism in the United States – today, it seems a little dated.’

  According to people close to Greg, the prejudice exposed by the film took a personal tone. Many ‘exclusive’ clubs in the Los Angeles area, clubs that did not admit Jews, blackballed him because they felt so threatened by the film. For many years they would not permit Greg to be invited to functions at their facilities. In the 1960s and afterwards these same clubs did extend invitations to Greg, but he returned the favors of the late 1940s and 1950s and declined to attend.

  Ironically, in 1947 when Greg was making Gentleman’s Agreement, he also chose to invest his talents and energy in a playhouse based in his birthplace, La Jolla – a town that actively excluded Jews. La Jolla’s anti-Semitism in housing goes back to the 1920s when Greg was growing up there. Isabelle Baresch, a resident of La Jolla since 1910, said restrictive covenants became obvious when the town experienced a miniature land boom in the 1920s and developers began construction of La Jolla Shores in 1926. That development restricted ownership to people of Caucasian blood.

  Prior to 1948 when the Supreme Court made restrictive racial covenants illegal, the covenants were common in the village. They ruled out ‘any persons whose blood is not entirely that of the Caucasian race . . . either as owner, lessee, licensee, tenant or in any other capacity than that of servant or employee.’

  After 1948, in the years when the La Jolla Playhouse flourished, new tactics were created to enforce anti-Semitism. A ‘gentleman’s agreement’ was put in place. In an article in Los Angeles Times West Magazine, Roger Rapoport described the green card system used by local realtors. ‘If the realtor felt a prospective buyer was undesirable he put “positive” on the slip. If he was desirable he wrote “negative”. This slip wa
s passed among realtors. Property owners colluded with the system. If they did not wish to sell to Jews they would leave their porch lights on in the daytime so that real estate agents would know not to show that property to any Jewish clients.’

  Alice Craig Greene, a resident of a nearby town, decided to investigate for herself and posed as a prospective buyer who ‘preferred restricted property,’ implying anti-Semitism on her part. The real estate agents she spoke to were open and reassuring about their discrimination policies. They proudly explained how ‘a kind of gentleman’s agreement had taken the place of legal restrictions.’ She called ten real estate agents. They referred to the objects of their discrimination as people who were ‘unpleasant in that line,’ the ‘Semitic race,’ ‘this menace,’ or simply ‘Them.’

  A surviving rumor (denied by Greg) asserted that when La Jolla Playhouse players held cast parties at the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club, Jewish cast members were not allowed to attend. For his part, Greg was concerned that his actors would conduct themselves in an upright fashion. He marched into a tailor shop and told the owners: ‘If any actor leaves town without paying his bill, let me know.’

  Greg had dreams of building a theater overlooking the sea to give film actors like himself the opportunity of performing in front of a live audience. To Greg’s way of thinking, the British system was vastly superior. ‘Laurence Olivier is making a picture in the daytime, and in the evening he does Richard III on the stage and somehow manages to do a big part in Peer Gynt – it must be playing in a theater next door. That’s wonderful. We should work like that in this country.’

  And he wanted to re-establish his connection with the town that had nurtured him in his childhood. So, he conceived the idea of the La Jolla Playhouse. That way, he could grow his acting talent and, at the same time, go home again. With David O Selznick’s financing (in providing the funds, he called Greg ‘a maniac about the stage’), he joined with Joseph Cotton, Jennifer Jones, Dorothy McGuire and Mel Ferrer to get the Playhouse underway.