Gregory Peck- A Charmed Life

by Lynn Haney

  Greg felt a sense of urgency about his career. This was his strongest motivation for establishing the Playhouse. Though cast in one hit movie after another, he feared he was losing valuable ground and he was ever mindful of the competition. Each year there were thousands of newcomers, ready to do anything to get a role. When a reporter asked about Broadway, Greg sounded exasperated. ‘The stage, yes, when I get through these commitments.’ But he knew that wouldn’t happen for at least three years.

  Greg knew that ‘wonderful’ and ‘excellent’ were weak words in a town where everything is spoken of in superlatives. He lamented: ‘Hollywood is a vacuum in which criticism doesn’t exist. The only way you can get an honest opinion is in front of an audience that pays to see you.’ John Barrymore expressed the same sentiment years earlier when he wrote off Filmland as ‘the flatulent cave of the winds.’ Actors live in a cocoon of praise. They never meet the people who don’t like them. Without audience feedback, it was hard for an actor to know if he was any good or not. At the same time, Greg was keenly aware that men whom he looked up to such as Alfred Hitchcock and Elia Kazan didn’t consider him an actor of the first rank. Even King Vidor gave him only a backhanded compliment when asked about Greg’s performance in Duel in the Sun, saying: ‘He was better in this than anything else I’ve seen him do.’

  During breaks in the shooting of Gentleman’s Agreement, Greg discussed the idea for the La Jolla Playhouse with Dorothy McGuire and they got the ball rolling. He knew she also bemoaned the fact that her film contracts did not allow her time to return to Broadway. So they formulated the idea for what would be known as the Actors Company, which would enlist the services of well-known stars in revivals of hit shows, the same format that had been so successful at Santa Barbara’s Lobero Theater six years before.

  The actors at the La Jolla Playhouse were paid $55 a week plus hotel accommodation and two meals a day. The tone changed somewhat when Jennifer Jones, an Oscar winner for The Song of Bernadette and engaged at that time to Selznick, came to do Serena Blandish, a play by S N Behrman, from the novel A Lady of Quality by Enid Bagnold. She arrived with luxury trailer and butler, chauffeur and maid, plus a wardrobe designer and acting coach – the famous Constance Collier, who also played a major role.

  The town’s leading hotel, La Valencia, a huge and venerable Spanish-style building, contained suites luxurious enough to satisfy the demands of the cream of California society, as well as movie stars, and its small single rooms were moderately enough priced to solve the featured players’ housing problems. A striking gold mosaic-tiled tower atop the hotel had presided over Prospect Street since Greg’s childhood when the beachfront homes were just cottages. In the 1930s, stars such as Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin and Lillian Gish found the hotel an ideal hideaway. The tower was used as a lookout for enemy planes during the Second World War. The ‘Playhouse’ itself was the large and comfortable high school auditorium.

  With his tunnel vision, Greg focused on getting the Playhouse underway. He was coming back a success; the small-town boy raised by his grandmother was now being treated with deference. It was a triumph. Drinking at the Whaling Bar at La Valencia, his two small boys playing at the Bath and Tennis Club, he didn’t have time, nor, perhaps, the inclination, to put his beloved small town under a harsh lens and look at its ugly legacy of prejudice.

  Greg quickly learned that you must be forgiven your triumphs by those who stayed behind. And you must hang on every word said to you lest you appear ‘uppity.’ And you must ask questions before they are asked of you. ‘How many kids do you have?’ He would inquire before anybody could bring it up. As long as people talked about themselves to him, they thought he was great and had not changed one bit for the worse.

  The Whaling Bar was the social nexus of the early Playhouse years. Greg put in more than his share of late nights at the bar, which constituted one of his all time favorite haunts. Then he’d make the long drive back to Los Angeles, catch a few hours’ sleep and report to the set at 6 or 7 a.m. ‘Yeah, well, I don’t know how the hell we did it,’ he reminisced years later. ‘We were young. It’s the only explanation.’

  Greg and Mel Ferrer often drove down to La Jolla together to help with new plays and encourage the actors and crew. On one occasion the two of them were putting on the play Command Decision which called for a couple of fliers to walk onstage at the end of the last act, and Greg and Ferrer agreed to do the walk-ons the final night.

  Ferrer recalled: ‘About halfway down the coast, I asked Greg what we’d do for Air Force uniforms and he said, “Forget it. I already picked up the costumes.” We arrived to find the play already in progress. Then we went into a special little dressing room to get into what I thought would be the military uniforms. Instead, Greg got me some outlandish costume and a gorilla suit for himself. You can imagine the surprise of the cast when we walked onstage right on cue, wearing those outfits. Everybody broke up and forgot their lines. And the audience became hysterical.’

  Greg functioned as artistic director for the first critical years. He helped choose plays, attended openings and charmed stars into performing at minimum wages. He also acted in three plays during the three years following the Playhouse’s opening. When he departed for London in 1951 to film Captain Horatio Hornblower, he became less active in the Playhouse. Mel Ferrer and Dorothy McGuire continued it with McGuire’s husband, John Swope, taking over management.

  Looking back on the rough and tumble early years Greg said: ‘It was a lot of fun – and a lot of work. We had only one week to rehearse, so we had to schedule every hour into 20-minute scenes, 40-minute scenes. It was like a railroad schedule. We demanded – no, we couldn’t really demand, because they were working for practically nothing – but we fervently requested that everybody learn their lines before they got there. We didn’t have time for people to walk around with a book in their hand.’

  In 1947 Greg and Greta bought their dream house. It was located at 1700 San Remo Drive in the high reaches of the Pacific Palisades. A choice area for film people, the community offered steep bluffs and dramatic views of the sea. Sticking out into a canyon, their house provided a view of 20 miles in all directions. Innovative for its time, it was designed in the late 1930s by Clifford May, who virtually invented modern ranch style – justified by low, long, one-story houses with sliding glass doors, and concrete slab floors leading directly on to the hard, packed earth to enable people to pass from interior to exterior without stepping down. It was a concept architects called ‘ground contact,’ and it traced its roots to the Spanish houses in the nineteenth century and old California missions. A drive circled up to the front door, a Clifford May touch that became an instant status symbol when first used.

  The house was designed for comfort, with great glass windows open to breathtaking views. Drawing on her Finnish background, Greta took the lead, furnishing it comfortably with blond Scandinavian pieces with splashes of color in the draperies, rugs and paintings. It was an open, frank and sensible house, much like Greta’s nature.

  When home, Greg gravitated to the den, his preferred retreat. It reflected his personal taste. An upright piano stood in one corner; a glass-top bar upholstered in green leather with matching stools stood in another. (Greg and Greta appeared in Life posing for a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer advert at this bar.) The room also contained a leather-covered sofa, rows of bookcases (over 500 volumes on Lincoln) and a record player with a stack of vinyl next to it – lots of Burl Ives. (Greg’s favorite record was Harry the Hipster playing a barrelhouse piano and singing ‘Fry Me A Cookie in a Can of Lard.’) Some evenings, he hosted poker games in his lair. It was a place for casual entertaining and for family evenings with dogs and kids. Other times, the den served as his private space in which he isolated himself and stretched his mind. Many of his intellectual interests were beyond the ken of his wife.

  As he became more sophisticated, Greg was learning to pull up the drawbridge and be more selective about who got close to him. When
he first arrived in Hollywood, he and Greta threw Sunday open houses – ‘Y’all come!’ kind of affairs. Now he was able to make excuses and extricate himself from people who weren’t particularly talented or interesting. He’d talk to someone for a few minutes and then send them on their way. He also relied more heavily on his secretary to act as a shield. He considered it ‘part of the process of growing up in Hollywood.’ Greta remained spontaneous and open. While Greg liked to present himself as something of a handyman around the house, Greta blithely told a reporter: ‘He tries, but that’s about all. Someone else has to finish the job.’

  Despite all the work pressure and the temptations of women and drink, he knew he liked the film colony. He reflected: ‘Hollywood has given me essential values more than anything else about living, about my work, my family and the relative importance of things. It’s taught me the value of simplicity, of what makes for lasting happiness. This is a place that can throw you or make you. I have long ago stopped believing my own publicity. And the town is still molding me.’

  With his bad sacroiliac, Greg appreciated his new home’s big swimming pool, rimmed by high glass walls to keep out the winds. He still rode horseback to keep trim – but he was clearly tempting fate. Back in 1946 he was out in the San Fernando Valley at the place of a rancher friend when his horse slipped and pinned down one of his long legs. The bone was broken in three places. He laughed it off: ‘I’m not the hero type anyway.’

  As soon as the Pecks got settled, they held a surprise fourth birthday party for Jonathan. Greta hired a troop of entertainers. They staged a small-time aquacade in the pool, complete with the hula dancer on a surfboard. ‘I couldn’t tell who had the best time – the kids or me,’ Greg admitted. He was on hand to see that nobody got lost, strayed or stolen, and when the magician’s rabbit scurried down into the canyon, he chased it through the cactus while the kids let out a chorus of cries. He came back scratched and bruised, but he had the rabbit.

  By one account, Greg was a hit with the kids in the ’hood. Leslie Epstein, author of numerous novels including King of the Jews and San Remo Drive: A Novel of Memory and director of the Creative Writing Program at Boston University, was a Pacific Palisades neighbor of the Pecks when he was a child. His father and uncle wrote dozens of films together in the late 1930s and 1940s, including The Man Who Came to Dinner, Arsenic and Old Lace, Strawberry Blonde, Yankee Doodle Dandy and Casablanca. ‘We lived at 1341 San Remo Drive,’ said Epstein. ‘As I remember it, Gregory Peck lived northward a few blocks up on the same street. As kids we would trick or treat in the neighborhood. Our favorite by a long shot was Gregory Peck’s house. More often than not the actor would come to the door himself, kind and genial. I remember once he dropped a big gingerbread man into my Ralph’s [supermarket] shopping bag.’

  Greg had arrived. In the eyes of the world, he had an attractive adoring wife, two healthy children and a beautiful home. He had received three Oscar nominations. Yet, he couldn’t stop striving. Another symbol of success – his picture on the cover of Time magazine with a profile inside, clarified how far he had come.

  On the plus side, Time noted the diversity of Greg’s roles and his resistance to typecasting. ‘During 1947, cinema addicts watched him as a gentle backcountry father in The Yearling, as a lady-killing hunter in The Macomber Affair, as lascivious Lewt in Duel in the Sun, and as a crusading journalist in Gentleman’s Agreement – performances which established him as an actor of solidarity and range.’

  At the same time, the article gave the readers a candid evaluation of Greg’s abilities: ‘He has shown no signs of that depth of intuition which would suggest that he will ever become a great actor – as Olivier, for instance, may become. But he seldom fails to turn in a performance that is honorably beyond the line of movie duty. He is diligent, definitely if quietly talented, intelligent about his work; and he has an obvious capacity for study and for growth. Unless he succumbs to boredom, frustration, wealth, or the hideous difficulties of trying to be both a matinée idol and an honest artist, he is certain to become a thoroughly good actor.’

  There it was, in a nutshell. If he worked hard, kept his eye on the ball, he could be ‘a thoroughly good actor.’ Was that enough for Gregory Peck? He was in his early thirties now and at a point in his professional life when he didn’t have to break his neck. But his compelling drive wouldn’t let him slow down. He recalled: ‘I was like a fire horse breaking out of the barn three times a year to make a movie.’ Consumed by ambition, he was about to put himself in peril of losing everything.

  CHAPTER NINECHAPTER NINE

  Trouble in Paradise

  ‘But for the grace of God . . . ’

  Gregory Peck, on escaping the blacklist

  In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Red scare – or Communist witch hunt – hit Hollywood and eventually the whole country. It gave rise to a miasma of fear, hysteria and guilt. Director John Huston, who positioned himself at the vanguard in the fight against this tyranny, recalled it as a period of true national shame. ‘There was a Communist under every bed,’ Huston recalled, ‘and everyone seemed eager to drag him out. It was brother against brother, friend against friend. Innocent people were hustled off to jail. Many lost their jobs – even their lives – simply because they believed in and exercised what they knew to be their Constitutional privileges: freedom of speech and political affiliation.’

  Though the movie bosses insisted there was no official roster of those in disfavor, in reality the list of names of those to be barred from employment was privately exchanged among the studio heads. But in June 1950 three former FBI agents and a right-wing television producer, Vincent Harnett, published Red Channels, a pamphlet listing the names of 151 writers, directors and performers who they claimed had been members of subversive organizations before the Second World War, but had not so far been blacklisted. The names had been compiled from FBI files in a detailed analysis of the Daily Worker, a newspaper published by the American Communist Party.

  The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), headed by Thomas Parnell, sent out a rash of subpoenas, addressed to prominent Hollywood executives, actors, producers and directors, calling for them to testify before the Committee. A procession of ‘friendly witnesses’ appeared first, who willingly shared hearsay and cast aspersions on the characters of their colleagues. Given total immunity, they demonstrated what some considered true patriotism and others regarded as categorical cowardice; they pointed fingers at their peers, their employees, their families and friends, branding them as Communists, and offering ‘evidence’ of their transgression.

  Greg’s friend Burl Ives was one of those named but he agreed to appear before the HUAC and named several former friends, including Pete Seeger, as members of the Communist Party. This enabled him to continue his career in Hollywood and he appeared in Show Boat (1954), East of Eden (1955), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) and (co-produced by Gregory Peck) The Big Country (1958).

  Of the 41 witnesses, 19 declared their intention to be ‘unfriendly’ (to refuse to answer questions about their political affiliations). Of the 19, 11 were directly questioned about their membership to the Communist Party. German émigré playwright Bertolt Brecht left the country after his appearance, leaving just ten – the infamous Hollywood Ten.

  To counter what they claimed as reckless attacks by the HUAC, a group of Hollywood liberals led by actor Humphrey Bogart, his wife Lauren Bacall, John Huston, William Wyler, Gene Kelly and others, established the Committee for the First Amendment (CFA). The CFA traveled to Washington to lend support to the Hollywood Ten. However, as the ‘unfriendly witnesses’ began to respond to their inquisitors with much disdain, and often without a solid grounding in historical facts, the Hollywood stars began to look foolish and to appear as tools of the Communists.

  Humphrey Bogart wrote a piece for the March 1948 issue of Photoplay magazine entitled ‘I’m No Communist,’ in which he admitted being ‘duped.’ His trip to Washington, he said, had been �
�ill-advised.’ John Garfield wrote a similar article called ‘I’m a Sucker for the Left.’ Edward G Robinson lamented, ‘The Reds Made a Sucker Out of Me.’

  The most pathetic attempt to ask the HUAC for mercy was made by Larry Parks. Parks, best known for the lead in The Al Jolson Story (1946), pleaded with the Committee on his hands and knees. He named, among others, James Cagney, Sam Jaffe, Sterling Hayden, John Garfield, M D Devine, Madeleine Carroll, Gregory Peck, Humphrey Bogart and Edward G Robinson. It turned out that Greg and Bogart were actually speaking against Communism in situations Parks recalled. Parks was blacklisted even after his many attempts not to be. Anyone who opposed the hearings was branded a ‘Communist sympathizer’ and instantly placed on the blacklist.

  Subsequently, Hedda Hopper – giddy Hedda, who boasted of ordering 150 hats a year – and Louella Parsons – who proclaimed her Catholicism to the world with a 10-foot high electrically wired statue of the Virgin Mary on her lawn – took up the banner of the ‘Red Baiters’ and began taking pot shots at directors, actors and writers. Their right-wing patriotism gathered exuberant, dangerous momentum. Hopper especially, counting Joseph McCarthy and J Edgar Hoover among her good friends, carried on so fiercely and with such a specious lack of knowledge or analytical ability that many conservatives, including John Wayne, urged her to shut up. She ignored him.

  Because he was such a big star, Greg received a degree of protection against being placed on the blacklist. Yet, the way he conducted himself at the time of the scourge and the manner in which he related to those who were blacklisted says much about his character. He never kowtowed to the red baiters. He stayed loyal to blacklisted friends. Yet he never took a front position at the barricades; his was not one of the braver stances. Most interesting of all, he refused to throw stones. While studio heads such as Darryl Zanuck and Jack Warner behaved like cowards in the name of patriotism, Greg remained loyal to them. And when Elia Kazan, the brilliant director of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and Gentleman’s Agreement, turned stool pigeon and handed over the names of colleagues including Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett, Pamela Miller, Morris Kozlowski, Phoebe Brand and Tony Graber, Greg refused to publicly excoriate him. He could separate the director’s character from his enormous contributions to the theater and the movies. And he held to that position for the duration of both his and Kazan’s careers.