by Lynn Haney
He was also extremely fair, treating members of his crew with the same regard as his stars. Consequently, those who were loyal to him were fiercely so. But many actors disliked his method of bullying a performance out of them. On one occasion he got into a fistfight with Spencer Tracy and on another nearly came to blows with John Wayne.
Wellman admitted: ‘As far as actors are concerned, the stars, I haven’t been too fortunate with them. I’ve made pictures with most of them, but I don’t think I’d win any popularity awards.
‘An actor is a peculiar sort of guy. He’s not like you or me. I’m not downgrading them particularly, but they are a different breed. They look in the mirrors all the time. They have to. They have to see what they look like and say lines to themselves. They look at their faces to see which is the best side to be photographed. You know, one of two things has to happen: you’ve got to fall in love with what are you looking at, or you’ve got to hate the son of a bitch!’
Greg’s tendency to be cautious and to over-worry a part due to his perfectionism wasn’t Wellman’s way. He was known as a director who worked fast. Not because he was trying to save money, but because he thought fast. He told one producer: ‘Look, I can’t change my ways. I make mistakes, but I make them fast and cheap. If you want slow and expensive, don’t hire me.’
Wellman heard Anne Baxter didn’t want to work with Greg. So, during the first scene of the two principals in which they fight, the director took Greg aside and warned: ‘Anne Baxter will kick the hell out of you. And when you start that fight, you better look out for yourself and wear something over your balls, because she’ll destroy you.’
Wellman quickly learned Greg wasn’t much of a pugilist – be it against man or woman. In exasperation, he said: ‘Well, you can’t fight. Can you kick a football? Well, you’re going to have to fight with John Russell, knock him into the water and when his head comes up, kick it like a football.’ Reflecting on the film at a later date, Wellman said: ‘One of my favorite actors is in that film – Greg Peck. I say that sarcastically. We made a good picture, despite him.’
CHAPTER TEN
Domestic Affairs
‘A dignified public front is very important to Greg.’
Greta Peck
Greg was now operating independently, not bound by any studio contract. He could choose his movie roles from the scores of scripts that came his way from producers. ‘I work as hard picking a story as I do acting it,’ Peck admitted.
When reporters interviewed him, he tried to keep the conversation focused on his work, but if a journalist insisted upon asking about his private life – undoubtedly having heard rumors about his marital problems – Greg devised a clever way to dampen their interest. He’d present himself as irredeemably boring. Here’s an example:
‘Let’s forget the picture for minute,’ said an interviewer. ‘Tell me about your home. What did you do when you went back to the house last night?’
‘Well,’ said Peck. ‘When I got home I found a piece of plaster that fell off the bathroom wall. So I went down to the cellar and mixed some patching plaster. Then I came upstairs again and patched up the wall. It took me about 20 minutes, I guess. Then I went back downstairs again.’
‘Then what?’ pursued the newsman. ‘Did you go out to a night club? Did any of your screen-star friends drop over? Did you go to a film premier?’
‘No,’ answered Greg. ‘It was getting pretty late by then. So I went to bed.’
Actually, there was much going on at home, and not all of it happy. On 21 April 1948 Greta Peck was involved in a car accident in which she was accused of hit and run. She was navigating Sepulveda Boulevard returning home from her Red Cross volunteer job helping veterans at the Birmingham hospital in Van Nuys. The time was close to midnight and when she rear-ended another car, she kept on driving. Later she told investigators: ‘I remember slightly bumping into an automobile . . . I was afraid to stop because it was dark. And a man ran me into the curb, cursed me and took my keys. I had another set of keys, however, and drove the car home.’
Max Usland, a 45-year-old plasterer and the owner of the car she hit, said he chased her two miles to Sunset Boulevard. After grabbing her keys, he took them to the West Los Angeles police station and told the cops she hit his car three times.
Police traced the set of keys and the license number to the Pecks’ home on San Remo Drive. There, Officer L M Long reported, he found Greta ‘hysterical.’ She told the officers that she had taken ‘a couple of drinks when I got home to quiet my nerves.’ A hearing was held later and Greta was acquitted of the charges. The Uslands subsequently sued the Pecks because Mrs Usland, a passenger in the car, claimed to have suffered injuries to her neck. One can only imagine how this matter sat with Greg.
Whether she had a few drinks before she got into her vehicle or afterwards, the fact remained that both Greg and Greta were imbibing prodigiously. Alcohol was at the very heart of their lives, it was inseparable from the everyday rituals. Unless there was a traffic accident or some other public display, people took scant notice in Hollywood. Greg was not only drinking heavily but also taking Seconal to help get to sleep. It was dulling the edges of his perception and affecting his judgment. Their mutual heavy drinking was a red flag that something was out of kilter in their lives. It was a cry for help.
Greg was spending a great deal of time in La Jolla with the players: moments stolen from his wife and children. When he was around, he was a perfectionist. No picnic to live with! He was intolerant of mistakes, particularly those he made himself. He pushed hard and he could push others equally hard. Flexibility wasn’t his strong point. In his mind there was a right way and a wrong way to do something. He set goals for himself and others that were often impossible to reach. He had a surfeit of self-doubt and he invested a great deal of energy into details in order to make sure he could do his best when the moment arose. He believed: ‘Constant attention to detail before the cameras all day carries over into the home . . . what you do, think, and feel has to be right.’
An actor’s limited power to determine the outcome of a movie was brought home vividly to Greg when he joined the cast of The Great Sinner (1949). MGM studios was celebrating its 25th anniversary and set about mounting several Silver Jubilee Productions. The opulence of The Great Sinner’s settings and the caliber of its cast clearly indicated that the film was in the high production budget bracket. As usual, the undoing of noble intentions started in the scripting. The story, without credit, is taken from Dostoyevsky’s The Gambler. Christopher Isherwood, author of The Berlin Stories which became the smash hit musical Cabaret (1972) created the screenplay, borrowing biographical elements from the Russian novelist’s romantic feelings and gambling adventures.
The plot revolves around a serious young man (Peck) who can’t resist the lure of the gambling tables. Ava Gardner was cast as the daughter of a Russian general who saves Greg from gambling his life away. Her elaborate period costumes were magnificent, but the film was not. One critic said there was depth to Ava’s acting, but no depth in the dialogue.
Directed by Robert Siodmak, it boasted a big-time cast, including Walter Huston, Agnes Moorehead, Ethel Barrymore and Melvyn Douglas – and, of course, Ava. Greg knew right away he’d met a kindred soul. She became his all-time favorite leading lady. Over the years, they made three pictures together. ‘When I first worked with her, she was 23, and she was so beautiful she took your breath away. Now, when I look back, Ava is the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen.’ He was not alone in that opinion. Her gaze was dead-on, challenging, and immensely alluring. With her sensuous mouth, prominent cheekbones, green tigress-like eyes, luminous skin and auburn hair, she was animal magnetism personified. Ernest Hemingway pronounced her ‘the most beautiful animal in the world.’
In contributing a chapter to her autobiography Ava (1990), after Gardner died before she could complete it, Greg reflected: ‘What I liked about Ava was that we had so much in common it was like we were young
people from the same hometown. We both were products of middle-class, small American towns where everybody knew everybody, and it was on that basis that we struck up an immediate friendship.’
Like Greg, Gardner was caught up in a whirlwind and she didn’t know where she was going to land. Her private life was marked by parties, brawls, sprees and bedroom antics and, while Greg was never one of her lovers, he thoroughly enjoyed his role as her confidant.
‘Our relationship was and always has been as pals,’ Greg wrote. ‘I suppose some fellas would say, “Oh, come on, this is one of the most desirable and beautiful women in the world, and you tell me you were just pals?” And the answer is yes, that’s the truth. You don’t make a run at every beautiful girl you meet. It’s quite possible for a young man and a young woman in their prime years to be great friends.’
Greg needed Gardner to help liberate him from the prison of his repression. While he kept his emotions locked tightly within his rigid body, she spilled her guts, punctuating her stories with gestures, poignant insights and raucous laughs. He loved her for being so authentic, so utterly herself. Plus, she was very bright, yet very few people could appreciate the fact because her education was so limited. This played a major part in her low self-esteem and shyness. There was a kind of infinite sadness about her, as if everything good that came her way was undeserved. It made her an easy prey for bad relationships.
Recalled actress Arlene Dahl who worked with her at MGM: ‘Ava wouldn’t even go eat in the commissary because she was so scared to walk in and see Lana Turner and Greer Garson. She said she’d rather crawl under a rug than climb down some stairs at a party.’
MGM swim star Esther Williams recalled: ‘I tried to talk with her at the parties at Louis B Mayer’s, but if she was a little tipsy she’d say, “You don’t want to talk to me, Esther. I’m just trailer trash.” ’
Beauty may be only skin deep but it’s a valuable asset when you’re poor. Ava Gardner was destined to be a star by an act of nature. Looks alone propelled her out of Grabtown, a tiny dot on the map of North Carolina. (Her photograph was spotted in a store window by an MGM talent scout.) On the way out of town, she told her mother: ‘I can stay here and be a secretary, or I can go to Hollywood and breathe the same air that Clark Gable breathes.’ So the tomboy who liked nothing better than to run barefoot, climb trees and ride around in jalopies with the local boys found herself at MGM. When director George Sidney viewed her screen test, he threw up his hands and rejoiced. ‘She can’t act. She can’t talk. She’s terrific.’
Louis B Mayer was determined to mold Gardner into an ideal fantasy creature. He put diction coaches to work on her thick Southern accent. The pros scolded her for cracking her gum and cussing like a stevedore. They made fun of her lack of education. (By the age of 18 the only book she had read to completion was Gone With the Wind.) Though paralyzed by shyness and haunted by painful experiences from her childhood, Gardner fought to find her footing amidst the stars and oddballs, frauds and geniuses, tycoons and flesh peddlers.
It wasn’t until 1946 that Ava Gardner was discovered by the public, along with another newcomer, Burt Lancaster, in the screen adaptation of Hemingway’s The Killers. She quickly replaced Rita Hayworth as Hollywood’s love goddess and occupied that position until the ascent of Marilyn Monroe in the mid-1950s.
When Greg met Gardner, she was a bird with a broken wing. Although still in her twenties, she had two marriages behind her and had embarked on a stormy relationship with Frank Sinatra. Her first husband was Mickey Rooney. She was only 19 and a virgin when she married him. He was 21 and already a lady-killer. (He boasted his wooing technique combined ‘early Neanderthal and late Freud.’) He was also an inveterate partygoer who launched Gardner’s love affair with booze. When she left him, he turned ugly and threatened to get her back by force. Then he exploited her by publishing graphic descriptions of their sex life.
Her second husband, Artie Shaw, was the swing era jazz genius (Gardner danced to his band as a teenager) who married her as arm candy. ‘She was a goddess,’ he said. ‘I would stare at her, literally stare, in wonder.’ But once living with the flesh and blood woman, Shaw zeroed in on faults with the subtlety of a jackhammer. When she was trying to rise in the ranks from cheesecake starlet to legitimate performer, he’d make remarks like ‘I know girls who can act circles around you.’ Worst of all, he beat her, boasting it was ‘an effective method to keep her under control.’ After a year of marriage, he dumped her on the pretext she bored him.
Gardner possessed in abundance what Greg lacked (candor, irreverence, knock-your-socks-off humor) and she, in turn, looked to him for the qualities she so sorely needed (spiritual strength, reliability and an educated mind).
Greg could see Gardner’s talent was underrated – even by herself. Producers, directors and male co-stars felt threatened by her potent combination of spectacular looks, native intelligence, independence and moxie. This kind of paranoia was articulated years before by Cecil B DeMille when he said: ‘Feminine allure is a ruthless tool that has changed the course of civilization.’
Greg took it upon himself to develop Gardner’s acting skills. ‘I must have told her hundreds of times that she had it in her to be a great actress, that all she needed was a little more courage to attack, to go at a scene with the intention of selling it, of grasping the audience’s attention and holding it.’
The weakness of the meandering script of The Great Sinner, especially in the length of its ending, was made all the more glaring by Siodmak’s direction. Greg and Gardner had a lot of laughs making fun of the director who was a nervous wreck over directing such a ‘heavy’ picture. A nurse stood at the ready on the set and would periodically jab him in the arm with vitamins or a tranquilizer, something to keep him from climbing the walls.
‘At other times,’ recounted Greg, ‘with hundreds of people in the casino scene and Melvyn Douglas eyeing me as I’m gambling away and Ava standing there watching me lose my shirt, Bob would really be overcome with the weight of the situation. He was always sitting on the seat attached to the camera crane, and he’d mutter, “Up, up, up”, and off he’d go to hide 18 feet above the crowds while he collected his thoughts. And Ava and I would grin at each other and say, “There he goes again!”’
In the period following the filming of The Great Sinner, the Pecks’ marriage almost reached breaking point. Greg had a tremendous ability to concentrate on one thing at a time and shut out all other concerns. He used this compartmentalized approach in focusing on his movie roles, building a strong base for the La Jolla Playhouse, helping friends such as Ava Gardner find their way in life and, finally, tending to his duties as a family man. On paper, compartmentalization is a highly effective approach to the challenges of daily living. That’s on paper. In real life, it often stinks. Spouses, in particular, don’t like to be shut out or relegated to the bottom of their mate’s list of priorities.
At the beginning of 1949, Greg and Greta had a bitter fight. It was serious enough for Greg to flee the house without telling Greta where he was going. However, their marital drama was picked up by Louella Parson’s spy network and shared with her million plus readers. On 21 January she wrote: ‘For some days the rumor has been current in Hollywood that Gregory and Greta Peck have reached the breaking point . . . Mrs Peck, who sounded a little vague when I asked if she and Greg had trouble, said: “I hope there is no trouble. I wouldn’t like to have anything happen, but I have not heard from Greg in over two days.”’
This item was followed several days later with a bulletin from Parsons that came as a total surprise to the runaway actor: ‘The Gregory Pecks are expecting a baby!’ The article went on to say: ‘In the midst of all the rumors that Greg and his wife, Greta, are straining at the matrimonial leash, comes definite news that the Pecks are expecting their third child in June.’ She then had the nerve to add: ‘I think it is likely that at the time Greg left home he didn’t know about the expected baby.’
To cool
off from the argument, Greg had flown down to Mazatlan in Mexico and gone deep-sea fishing. After a call from his agent, George Chasin, telling him that Parsons had phoned his office asking for comment on the pregnancy, Greg headed home where Greta confirmed she was pregnant. Greg made his peace with Greta and quickly went into repair mode with Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper.
Just how much they could damage a career would be seen that year in the way they alerted the world to the transgressions of Ingrid Bergman. She had been sold to the public as a virginal Swedish beauty who led a happy, healthy home life with her husband Peter Lindstrom and daughter Pia. But Bergman went to Europe in 1949 to make Stromboli – and fell in love with her director, Roberto Rossellini. When rumors of a divorce surfaced, this alone sent former fans into a moral frenzy. But when Parsons, affectionately known as ‘love’s undertaker,’ broke the news that Bergman was also expecting Rossellini’s child, she not only scooped every other gossip monger in the nation, but signaled Bergman’s crucifixion.
The actress married Rossellini soon afterwards, but the harm – in Puritan American eyes – was already done. Banished from Hollywood and from her position as one of the industry’s most important (top ten box-office) stars, Bergman – despite being one of the most magnificent screen females in history – did not make an American film again until her award-winning Anastasia in 1956, and she did not return to Hollywood until 1969 for Cactus Flower.
Some actors gave the gossip columnists the back of their hand. For example, when Kirk Douglas separated from his first wife, Sheilah Graham wrote that the couple’s ‘alleged’ parting was just a publicity gimmick. Infuriated, Douglas broke his usual silence and called her up. ‘You cunt! How dare you print that! This is our life. We have two children. And you make it as if we’re playing a game.’
Instead of charging the harpies head on, Greg made his Faustian bargains. First, he called on Parsons. It was raining the night he arrived at her house and he was wearing a raincoat curled around his shoulders and an old hat. She took notes and shared their hearthside conversation with her readers in the February 1949 issue of Photoplay. She began: ‘Don’t you believe, for a minute, that the Gregory Peck’s marriage is close to the rocks. I know, because I have just talked with Greg, in what, I am sure, is the most intimate story he has ever given about his private life.’ She then went on to say that Greg blamed himself for the fight. ‘We had a quarrel, sure,’ he said. ‘You know how married people are. They quarrel and battle over trivial things and then comes the big blowup. In our case, it was all my fault. I was nervous and tired. My first thought was, “I’ll get out of here, anywhere, just so it is away.” So I went fishing down in Mexico.’