by Lynn Haney
In his autobiography, A Life (1988), Elia Kazan sums up his motivation for betraying friends: ‘For years I declared myself an ardent liberal and made all the popular declarations of faith, but the truth was I am like most of you, a bourgeois. I go along disarming people, but when it gets to the crunch, I am revealed to be a person interested only in what most artists are interested in, himself.’
The atmosphere was deeply chilling. Greg watched in anguish as the careers of some of his friends were destroyed. The case of John Garfield was particularly poignant. His distinctly leftist views and staunch support of the working class led to him be labeled a Communist sympathizer by the HUAC. He did not cooperate at the official hearings and suddenly found it difficult to get work. Through he returned briefly to the theater, Garfield did not flourish. At the age of 39 he died of coronary thrombosis, a condition that some have attributed to the stress the Committee placed upon him.
One thing which was always more or less evident was that the hearings were not so much about establishing criminal behavior as getting people to renounce their past – and in some cases their friends. For the most part the Committee already knew the names that it demanded the testifiers should reveal. This symbolic ritual, Victor Navasky called ‘degradation ceremonies.’ Arthur Miller and Lillian Hellman referred to it as ‘an inquisition.’ Miller added in Timebends, his memoir of the period, ‘With the tiniest Communist Party in the world, the United States was behaving as though on the verge of bloody revolution.’
A number of Hollywood directors, screenwriters and actors had joined the Communist Party or contributed funds to its activities during the Depression of the 1930s. Greg was a Democrat with strong sympathy for the underdog and he supported many ultra liberal causes, but he was not Red or even Pink. It was not in his nature to be that radical. Besides, committed political activism would have taken too much time away from his career.
In 1948 Greg was called before the Red-hunting Fact Finding Committee set up by the California Legislature. He was named for his association with several liberal organizations, along with a host of other stars. His strategy was simply to give them a list of every liberal organization to which he had contributed money, with the letterheads of their stationery, and explain that he made the contributions because he thought they were legitimate organizations. He told the Committee: ‘I am not now and never have been associated with any Communist organization or supporters of Communism. I am not a Communist, never was a Communist and have no sympathy with Communist activities.’
The Committee accepted his explanation as coming from someone who, in films and in life, appeared to be a straight shooter. And Greg never deviated from this stance. To one concerned fan he wrote, ‘I hold no brief for Communists, but I believe in and will defend their right to act independently within the law. I question whether members of the committee are interested in defending our form of government or whether they are attempting to suppress political opinion at odds with their own.’
Fate works its ironies, however. Hollywood had known its most prosperous year ever in 1946. But as the 1940s drew to a close, the industry began eroding from its very foundation. The Hollywood Purge was draining the industry of some of its best writers such as Dalton Trumbo (who wrote the screenplay for Greg’s triumphant Roman Holiday using a friend as a front), Ring Lardner Jr, Abraham Polonski, Carl Foreman; directors such as Edward Dmytryk; and actors Marsha Hunt, Gale Sondergaard, Betty Garrett and Anne Revere. It was extinguishing new ideas, sapping fresh blood, and discouraging innovative story treatment. The atmosphere was rank with fear, betrayal and stagnation.
The period of the blacklist continues to fascinate because, as critic Harold Clurman said, it was mostly about conscience. ‘How people felt about the whole procedure called “naming names” and how they prioritized morality and conscience vs. their jobs.’ Though he wasn’t at the front of the barricades, Greg proved true blue.
Keeping his career afloat occupied most of Greg’s time. When he had been making Spellbound, he was given a gift of a leather binder. From then on he used it to contain his personally annotated script of whatever picture he was working on. And he regarded it as his good-luck charm. He needed all the talismans he could get as he embarked on The Paradine Case (1947). Just as with Spellbound, it was produced by David O Selznick and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. And Hitchcock wasn’t happy with the choice of Greg for the lead. For that matter, Hitchcock resented working with Selznick again, due to the producer’s manic obsession with Jennifer Jones.
Still, Hitchcock owed Selznick one more picture before the expiration of their contract. Hitchcock had become a major force in the movie industry. The director’s notoriety and his ability to independently create successful films of substance signaled, for many, the rise of the director and the decline of the producer. As for Greg, Selznick knew putting him in another Hitchcock picture wasn’t ideal, but he gave him the lead anyway to ensure box-office. Hitchcock was bristling at the continued interference from the producer and was already dreaming of the days ahead on his own.
Hitchcock would have preferred Laurence Olivier or Ronald Colman for the role of Anthony Keane. Greg realized he looked too young for the part: after trying out various moustaches to suitably age himself, he settled for graying his temples. ‘I don’t think that Gregory Peck can play an English lawyer,’ Hitchcock complained.
Although Hitchcock certainly loved murder and suspense he hadn’t done many courtroom dramas. The Paradine Case provided him with such an opportunity. A beautiful woman, Maddalena Anna Paradine, played by the enchanting Alida Valli, stands accused of murdering her wealthy, blind husband. She enlists the aid of renowned lawyer Anthony Keane (Peck). As they prepare her defense, the chemistry between the two begins to heat up. And as his emotions for Mrs Paradine grow stronger, Keane grows more convinced of her innocence. The case is difficult, however, as the judge (Charles Laughton) is no friend of Keane’s; the Queen’s Prosecutor, played by the excellent Leo G Carroll, is a serious foe; and only an inspired defense will have any chance of clearing Mrs Paradine.
Selznick had high hopes for Alida Valli whom he had only seen in Italian films and had the impression she had a beautiful face and figure. Otherwise, he bought her ‘sight unseen.’ He envisioned turning her into a star of Ingrid Bergman magnitude. He even decided to omit her first name from the credits to create a mysterious European aura about her. But when Valli arrived in Hollywood, it was apparent she was in need of a rigorous diet, extensive dental work and English lessons.
Another foreign talent in the film was the French actor Louis Jourdan. He was already under contract to Selznick. As the part was originally written, he was not the right choice by far, but Selznick had an engaging way of changing the script to make it fit any of his contract actors. Hence Louis Jourdan made his US debut and became a very successful performer in America from then on.
Due to Selznick’s fiddling with the story, The Paradine script could never catch up with the shooting schedule. Each day, Selznick would arrive on the set with newly written scenes for the day’s shoot. As Greg recalled: ‘This, of course, drove Hitchcock to distraction – Selznick was a totally disorganized but essentially lovable man, while Hitchcock, whose manner was not quite to lovable, was totally organized.’ The budget was a generous $4 million, with $70,000 of it going towards an exact replication of the Old Bailey courtroom.
To complicate matters, the Breen censorship office was hard at work shaping the movie to its narrow moral boundaries. Mandated: the design of the prison cell must not include a toilet; indelicate and profane words and phrases must be omitted – such as ‘Good God!’ and ‘Good Lord!’ and ‘Oh Lord!’ and ‘God knows’; the word ‘smut’ must be stricken from the dialogue; and the phrase ‘disorderly house,’ referring to a sloppy home, must be omitted since it might be taken to mean a house of prostitution. ‘Finally,’ Breen wrote in a long letter, ‘in the scene in the bathroom, it would be advisable to omit any showing of Gregory Peck
in the bath, even by suggestion, in order to avoid showing a man and a woman in the bathroom at the same time – even if fully clothed.’
‘Mr Selznick could be a slave driver!’ remembered Ruth Birch who worked on costumes. ‘We used to get memos by the thousands of words! The only time I got a short one was once when I made a goof. He sent me a memo simply saying, “Don’t let this happen again.”’
Before photography was finished, Selznick had dictated more than 400 memos based on his intense daily involvement in the production, from writing the final script to checking costumes to looking at the rushes each morning. Hitchcock’s disinterest in The Paradine Case was now an open secret, in spite of Selznick’s somewhat reckless allotment of a lavish budget.
Hitchcock was always overtly polite to Greg, sometimes taking him to Chasens with actor Charles Laughton. The restaurant invented the famous Hitchcock fish, a filet of sole with a kind of bread crust over it – something from his childhood. Laughton thought well of Greg and boosted his ego by suggesting to him that with his voice he should play Shakespeare. Greg recalled: ‘He was a ham – but a great one.’
Greg was flattered by Laughton’s advice, but didn’t have the confidence to think that big. He also enjoyed getting to know Louis Jourdan and talking about the Yankees with the legendary Ethel Barrymore. She took delight in prizefighting and swapping stories about Joe Louis, her favorite champion.
The principals of The Paradine Case were assembled in a picture montage for a full-page ad inviting magazine readers to try Chesterfield cigarettes; each actor cocked his arm in a jaunty pose as he held the cigarette. Smoking helped sell the picture and the film sold smoking. ‘My God, when I was young, that’s what made us all smoke,’ said director John Frankenheimer who worked with Greg on I Walk the Line. ‘. . . I mean Humphrey Bogart smoked. Barbara Stanwyck smoked. Joan Crawford smoked. Everybody that you admired smoked, so you, as a young person, aspired to smoking.’
The film marked the last time Greg would be formally associated with either Hitchcock or Selznick. The producer disbanded his company in 1948, about the time the film industry began feeling the squeeze from television. Thereafter, Greg spoke well of Selznick even though the horse-trading producer would sell Peck down the river a few years hence.
Through the years Greg learned to his dismay that he would never be done with Alfred Hitchcock. ‘I must say I’m getting a little bit sick about questions about Hitchcock,’ he groused to a reporter years later. ‘Almost every interviewer asks the inevitable question about Hitchcock. “What was he really like?”’
On 13 March 1947 The Paradine Case opened to lukewarm reviews. After the film hit the theaters, Hitchcock vented his resentments, not at Selznick, but at the players. ‘Actors! I hate the sight of them! Actors are cattle – actresses, too. I tell them I hate the sight of them and they love it, the exhibitionists! Any profession that calls for a man to have to use paint and powder on his face in order to earn a living gives me evil thoughts. Think of it; little bits of powder, little bits of paint on the face of adult men and women so they can pay the rent.’
With Selznick literally out of the picture, and only one film obligated to MGM, Greg set about working off his obligations to Twentieth Century Fox. Alas, his director on the Fox project, a Civil War Western titled Yellow Sky (1949), shared Hitchcock’s disdain for actors. William ‘Wild Bill’ Wellman was the kind they don’t make anymore. A grizzly old director of the silent era, Wellman had a well-earned reputation for profane sarcasm. By the time Greg met him, he was in the autumnal phase of his colorful career. With scores of movies to his credit, he had successfully transitioned from silents to talkies, and helped pioneer today’s cinematic language.
Yellow Sky was the handiwork of writer-producer Lamar Trotti who also scripted the critically acclaimed Ox-Bow Incident (1943). This film was another quality realistic Western but with more commercial kick. It was a film in which the Western or horse opera, known in the trade as an ‘oater’ approached an art form.
Packed with suspense and set in the Wild West during 1867, Yellow Sky depicts a confrontation in an Arizona ghost town. Greg plays Stretch, the leader of a gang of bank robbers, who falls for a rambunctious young woman portrayed by Anne Baxter. Richard Widmark holds up his end as the dude.
Wellman was refreshingly roguish. Complex and demanding, with a sailor’s vocabulary and a pugilist’s social skills, he was even better known for his boisterous personality and his First World War exploits than for his prolific career as a film director. His wild youth, his infidelities and the raucous antics on his movie sets all added to his lure. As a teenager, he was put on probation for car theft and then dropped out of high school to join a professional minor league hockey team. His great dream was to become a flier. However, as his father ‘didn’t have enough money for me to become a flier in the regular way . . . I went into a war to become a flier.’
In 1917 he left the USA to join the French Foreign Legion. There, he became part of a group called the Lafayette Flying Corps, modeled after the famous Lafayette Escadrille. It was made up of 214 crazy kids. ‘We were made the rank of second-class soldier in the French Foreign Legion and got three and a half cents a day. But it was rugged,’ recalled Wellman. ‘You have an instructor on the ground, but you learn to fly alone, by the seat of your pants! . . . They kicked the hell out of you, until you got your wings . . . But I got through it all right with a broken back, some false teeth, a plate in the roof of my mouth, and some occasional strange noises in my skull!’ He was released from the service with the Croix de Guerre with full-gold palm leaves and five US citations (which later got him the job of directing the 1927 classic silent Wings). After working as a wing-walking stunt pilot, he got into the movies. He started as a mailroom boy at Goldwyn and rose to director in the 1920s.
Wellman’s reputation was augmented in the 1930s with such diverse productions as the gangster melodrama The Public Enemy (1931), which catapulted James Cagney to stardom, the highly romantic initial version of A Star is Born (1937), the satiric Nothing Sacred (also 1937) and the rousing Foreign Legion action adventure Beau Geste (1939). His reputation was further enhanced in the 1940s with the Ox-bow Incident (1943), a superb antilynching film despite its technical and logistical flaws.
Among Hollywood insiders, ‘Wild Bill’ was known to be tough on actors and to have frequent clashes with studio bosses. It’s not surprising that much of the Hollywood establishment didn’t like him. Irene Selznick referred to him as ‘a terror, a shoot-up-the town fellow, trying to be a great big masculine I-don’t know-what.’
Aware he was about to start a movie with a man who valued toughness, Greg wanted to be ready. He sized up the part, made sure that no aspect of the role escaped him and mapped out the locations where the film was to be shot. He also set out for Ralph McClutcheon’s stables in the San Fernando Valley to pick his own mount. McClutcheon trained movie horses.
One of the horses he tried trotted into a gallop beautifully. But when it went into a turn, it lost its footing because the ground was slippery and went down. It fell so fast Greg didn’t have time to get his foot out of the stirrup. As the horse hit the ground, it broke his ankle in three places. An ambulance was called and Greg was taken to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital.
As he waited to be taken to surgery, a nurse who was no spring chicken gave Greg an injection of morphine, but the effect of the morphine altered his perception and his behavior. He reached up from the trolley he lay on, stroked her breasts and told her: ‘You have the most beautiful breasts in the world. You are an angel. I love you.’
The nurse didn’t miss a beat, chiding him: ‘Morphine addicts say that to all the girls.’
Studio officials lost no time in contacting Greg’s surgeon, Dr Lee Siegel, and letting him know Yellow Sky was an expensive project and Gregory Peck an expensive movie star. Could he please get him back to work soon? Usually a broken ankle takes two months to heal; they wanted him on the set in four weeks.
; Greg’s ankle was reset, and four weeks later Siegel released him after setting his ankle in a special cast that would allow him to walk, even though it was not fully healed. Consequently, his ankle never did repair properly, and thereafter he had to resort to wearing a support to enable him to run – and he would run only if absolutely necessary. Years later, he admitted: ‘It was a stupid thing to do and I’ve paid for it ever since.’
With Greg’s ankle in a cast Wellman shot him for the first few weeks from the knees up or from the right side to keep the cast out of the shot. (Old devil Wellman himself found exaggerating his war injury limp was an excellent way to impress women.)
Undoubtedly, Greg had heard stories about the shenanigans on a Wellman film set; now he was about to experience it first hand. A Wellman set was more often than not witness to fistfights, wild parties and daring stunts (all of which usually involved the director himself ). ‘Now I used to be pretty wild!’ Wellman boasted. ‘I always had great troops with me. We played, and we worked; but the minute the bell rang, the sound stage fell silent and you could hear a pin drop on my set. But when I yelled, “Cut. Print.” I’m telling you, all hell broke loose. We had wild troops.’