Gregory Peck- A Charmed Life

by Lynn Haney

  Greg gave Parsons one of his rueful, half-quizzical smiles and added: ‘You’ll never know what a shock it was to read that I had left my wife and that no one knew my whereabouts!’ He whistled softly. ‘But, I’m glad you printed it. It taught me a real lesson. I’ll never go away again without telling Greta where I’m going.’

  He stretched his long legs in the general direction of the fire, blazing away cheerfully in her living room. He was dressed in slacks and a soft shirt, looking, according to Parsons, ‘as handsome as Lucifer.’ Then he popped the question:

  ‘I want to ask you just one thing, Louella. How did you find out that Greta was expecting another baby? I didn’t know that myself.’

  ‘Oh, I’m smart that way,’ she told him.

  ‘When my agent called and said you had asked him, I was flabbergasted,’ Greg admitted. ‘Greta hadn’t said a word until you phoned.’

  ‘Did you ever stop to think that it might have been Greta’s condition at that time that made her difficult?’ Parsons suggested. ‘But she was not!’ he protested quickly. ‘It was all my fault. I will tell you why I will never have any really serious trouble with Greta. I love her and she loves me!’

  He was thoughtful for a moment before going on. ‘I hate divorce. I was a child of a broken family. When I was three, my mother and father separated and there was much bitterness. I went from one relative to another, part of the time with my father and part with my mother, accepting, first my mother’s religion, and then my father’s . . . I’ve got two wonderful kids, Jonathan, four and a half, and Stephen who is two. Now, maybe, there is a little girl on the way. I don’t want them to have that kind of a life, and I can promise you, they won’t.’

  He finished off these poignant remarks by saying: ‘I have gradually been building up a philosophy, Louella, and that is, in order to live happily and fully with others, we must first learn to live with ourselves. If I hadn’t been wrong in the first place in squabbling with Greta, there would have been nothing unpleasant to print.’

  Then he launched into plans for his next movie, an epic called Quo Vadis, to be filmed in Italy. ‘I figure I’ll be finished with the picture in October and then Greta will join me. We will visit her kinfolks in Finland. She’s got a lot of relatives over there I have never met and we will descend on them bag and baggage. After that, we’ll go on to Sweden and Norway and Paris and London and all the spots that have just been names to us before.’

  And how about the children, Parsons wondered. To which, Greg replied: ‘No, I don’t think we will take the kids along on this first jaunt. I’d like to make this trip just with Greta. The children are too young to get anything out of it, anyway. And to Greta and me it would seem like the honeymoon trip we couldn’t afford when we were married.’

  ‘That sounds wonderful,’ Parsons said.

  ‘Yep,’ he grinned, ‘now all I have to do is to talk her into leaving the children!’

  One down and one to go! Next he invited Hedda Hopper over to his house in the Pacific Palisades. And, perhaps borrowing a leaf from Parsons, he sat Hopper down in his den in front of his fireplace. ‘We’re a close family here,’ he began. ‘I’m home a lot and Greta and are around each other all the time. I don’t play golf or tennis . . . When I’m not working I’m right here with Greta and the kids 24 hours a day. When I’m working out of town on location, she’s with me if it’s halfway possible. That’s the way we like it. That’s the way our whole life ticks.

  ‘Only, sometimes, when two people see too much of each other, some trifle occurs and they take it out on each other, blow their tops, have a spat. That’s what happened with us and so I decided to get away for the good of us both for a few days. I packed my bag, hopped in the Lincoln and headed south. Stopped at Del Mar, stayed overnight and got an idea: how about some fishing to relax? I had been tied pretty tight making Yellow Sky and then The Great Sinner – bang, bang – like that. If I have a hobby it’s deep-sea fishing and I’ve a friend who feels the same way. I gave him a ring; he met me in Tijuana. We hopped a plane to Mazatlan, and – well, I got me a 145-pound marlin swordfish! Then I came back home and things have been fine ever since.’

  Quo Vadis, slated to be Greg’s next movie, was not exactly part of the Bible, but it was sort of biblical. MGM had been trying for years to get a usable script out of Henry Sienkiewicz’s turgid novel about the early Christians. With Dore Schary’s encouragement, John Huston had devised what he regarded as ‘a modern treatment,’ in which Nero was portrayed as a prototype for his ‘fellow madman, Adolf Hitler.’

  Huston began casting on a grand scale: Greg was cast as the hero and Elizabeth Taylor as the heroine. Huston then went to Europe and started spending money. About $2 million had disappeared by the time the differences between Mayer and Huston brought the production to a halt, and Mayer turned everything over to a man he trusted, Mervyn LeRoy. Greg dropped out because of an eye infection and Elizabeth Taylor had other commitments. Eventually Quo Vadis was made and cost $12 million but turned into what Huston called ‘another dreadful spectacle, catering to the audience L B thought was there. L B was right; the audience was there.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Heart of the Matter

  ‘I’ve had my ups and downs. There have been times when I wanted to quit. Times when I hit the bottle. Marital problems. I’ve touched most of the bases.’

  Gregory Peck to journalist Vernon Scott

  Greg’s attempts to juggle his work commitments with family life began to take their toll on his health. In the summer of 1949, while helping to run the Playhouse in La Jolla, Greg developed heart spasms. He checked into a hospital but the doctors could find no physical basis for his condition. He was drinking heavily; frequently joining his Playhouse colleagues such as Charlton Heston, Ginger Rogers, Ethel Waters, Vincent Price and Zsa Zsa Gabor at La Valencia’s Whaling Bar. His time with Greta and the boys was catch-as-catch-can.

  His life was out of control but he wouldn’t admit it. He was determined to keep up the public front of the well-adjusted family man. About this time, he opined to an interviewer: ‘Hollywood is filled with the most unhappy success stories in the world. Guys and gals who are making fortunes, being pampered and petted by any number of people, and basking in the idolatry of movie fans all over the world still manage to find in this pleasant situation big tears of sadness, moments of deep depression and that hangdog look that usually goes with complete failure. Why this happens, I’ll never understand.’

  Fortunately, he was about to embark on a new phase of his career with a new director, one with whom he would develop his best relationship. At a time in his life when he sorely needed someone to give him guidance, Henry King turned up.

  ‘I think I did my best work with Henry King, who I just seem to have a good rapport with. Henry was a man’s man, warm, humorous, strong, an expert technician, prepared. He didn’t always direct meticulously, in great detail. It’s sort of sit back and see what I had to offer, and then he makes little adjustments and changes on what I brought to the part.’

  Of all Greg’s adventures with the maverick films directors of Hollywood’s Classic Era, none made him happier than working with Henry King. He referred to the days under King’s direction as ‘among the best of my working life.’ Of the bond he formed with King, he said: ‘It was probably a closer relationship than I have with some of my blood relatives.’

  Greg remembered vividly the day in 1949 when Darryl Zanuck introduced him to Henry King. It was in Zanuck’s corner office on the second floor at Fox. Zanuck was teaming King with Greg for a Second World War movie called Twelve O’Clock High (1950). ‘I had been around Twentieth Century Fox about five years by the time I met Henry. Darryl, who was close to Henry, was actively running the studio then and was in on everything, every script, chapter and verse. Darryl called to ask if he might send me the script of Twelve O’Clock High. I called back in a day or two and said, “You’ve got me if you want me.”’

  Greg was cap
tivated by King’s enthusiasm and relish for the project. ‘I liked him from the beginning. We always got along in a kind of father and son relationship but in another way knowing Henry was like having an older brother. And in yet another way, our relationship was just one of two close friends.’

  The project originated in 1947 when an unpublished novel found its way to Zanuck’s desk. Flipping through it, Zanuck called it ‘the best script I’ve ever read.’ He was immediately struck by the real-life exploits of Air Force Brigadier General Frank Savage who, in 1942, directed the first US precision bombings behind German lines. He later suffered a mental breakdown; a condition generally alluded to only in whispers in post-war America. Screenwriter for the project and veteran flier Sy Bartlett saw the parallel in Zanuck and Savage: ‘Zanuck ruled by rigid discipline, and, like Savage, Zanuck found he couldn’t crawl into the goddamn cockpit.’

  Next on Zanuck’s order of business was securing the Air Force permission to use military planes and to get permission to locate Second World War B-17 bombers. In return, the Air Force asked for and got changes to the script. The biggest objection was to the general’s mental breakdown. ‘We did not believe that a man with the strength of character as indicated and his moral fiber would burst out hysterically,’ wrote an Air Force adviser. ‘He would be more likely to breakdown with . . . just plain fatigue.’ Zanuck, who recognized that the Air Force would provide a crucial aspect of the film’s authentic portrayal of war, agreed to all changes.

  As one of the few non-vets on the project, Greg was nervous. He told King: ‘I never had any real military experience in my life.’ The director countered: ‘You’ll be so surrounded by military people who’ll be giving you advice that you’ll find yourself thinking like a military man.’

  Although his back injury made him a 4-F, Greg wanted to show he had the right stuff for the job. The town had plenty of actors with real combat experience and they would be scrutinizing his performance. Jimmy Stewart was one of those men. Nine months before Pearl Harbor, Stewart, at age 33, determined to become a combat pilot, and logged 300 hours of flying. He eventually led 20 bombing missions over Germany, hitting targets in Bremen, Frankfurt and Berlin. He won a succession of decorations, including the Distinguished Flying Cross twice, one of them for piloting the lead plane in a spectacular raid on key aircraft factories in Brunswick, Germany. He also received the Air Medal, a succession of oak-leaf clusters, six battle stars and the Croix de Guerre with palm.

  As shooting got underway, Greg discovered his instincts were correct vis-à-vis Henry King. In the leathery-skinned director’s blue eyes, there was always a sparkle. Like old-timers Raoul Walsh and William Wellman, King was thoroughly professional but there was a kind of playful challenge, always couched in an affectionate way, and never demanding, as if to say: ‘Let’s see what we can do. We’ll play this game together. Let’s give it the best we’ve got.’

  Reflected Greg: ‘I think we were cut from the same cloth, not merely as fellow actors, but more as Middle Americans. He was from Virginia. I was from California. But we seemed to share a lot of easy understanding without the need for further discussion. The values and the standards we held up for ourselves were in many ways similar, in spite of a 30-year age difference.

  The more he talked about King, the more Greg sounded like an idealist young man who has found his all-time hero: ‘I think that I learned by example, not so much by what he told me but by his being the kind of man he was and of the personal code he had. I also think of him as very American in character, old-fashioned in his ideals and extremely conscientious, kind and considerate with everybody on the set, but demanding and tough when things did not go right. He had steel in him. Those times were among the best of my working life. We both looked forward to the enjoyment of going to rushes together and watching a scene come out the way we wanted. I know that we both drove home feeling fine, satisfied that we had done a good day’s work.’

  While scores of actors and directors resented Zanuck’s despotic ways, commanding his studio with a sawed-off polo mallet, Greg and King respected him enormously. ‘He was amazing in his knowledge of maybe 30 to 40 different scripts,’ said Greg. ‘Almost line by line, he knew them and analyzed them and worked with writers and worked with directors.

  ‘I remember going to the telephone with Henry King and we just couldn’t make the scene work. We’d call up Zanuck in his office and say, “We’re doing Scene 87 and this dialogue doesn’t work for us.” And he knew the dialogue we were talking about, and we would work it out on the phone and change the script.’

  While Greg was in the midst of filming, Greta went into labor. On 17 June 1949 at 2.30 a.m., Dr Donald Tolleson delivered her third son who was named Carey Paul after Greg’s co-star Harry Carey in Duel in the Sun. Five hours later, Greta had a call from Louella Parsons eager for the details. ‘Of course, it was very inconsiderate of him to arrive at such an hour when his father is busy making a picture,’ Greta responded as the dutiful wife of a movie star plugging his next film. ‘He’s on the set of Twelve O’Clock High.’

  Twelve O’Clock High is considered a landmark film because it is one of the first post-war movies out of Hollywood to treat the war in emotionally complex terms. Framed by post-war prologue and epilogue as a flashback appreciation of wartime valor and teamwork, Greg did an outstanding job as Brigadier General Frank Savage, a callous, desk-bound leader who assumes command of a bomber squadron based in England after the previous commander is relieved of duty. At first, he has little rapport with the 918th bomber group, whose loyalty still belongs to their former commander. As they continue to fly dangerous missions over Germany, however, the group and Savage develop mutual respect and admiration, until the once alienated commander feels that his men are part of a family – where men’s bravery transcends the rigors of rigid discipline and by-the-book leadership. The film’s complex climax, in which the general waits patiently for his squadron to return to base – painfully aware that they may not return at all – is one of the most subtle yet emotionally intense scenes of any Second World War drama.

  Savage cracks under the cumulative stress of putting his best face forward for men who ‘don’t have confidence in anything anymore.’ Sitting paralyzed, with his hands clawed over his knees, then the arms of his chair, his cramped features project an utterly focused will, leading – in his mind – his pilots on a dangerous mission and bringing them safely home. Only the drum of returning planes unclenches his body, and brings him back to himself. The final scene, still disturbing today, must have stunned post-war audiences. As he stares dumbly into space, a comrade eulogizes: ‘It’s like a light bulb burned-out.’ It was a risk for Greg. Here he was a screen giant suffering an on-screen nervous breakdown. However, the leap of faith paid off for audiences, the studio and Greg, who cinched a Best Actor Academy Award nomination.

  Twelve O’Clock High is one of Greg’s movies that is still talked about today. And he continues to be commended for his performance. In listing his favorite movies, producer Martin Scorsese wrote: ‘I know all about Gregory Peck, don’t read any further, Gregory Peck is Gregory Peck, when he’s in a film you accept it for what it is, it’s a given, like a theorem in geometry, okay, Gregory Peck. But here he’s a man in war, dealing with his conscience and his fears. You figure, this guy’s so tough he can take anything. But then comes the moment when he has to get into the bomber, and the machismo breaks down. He can’t get in the plane. And I love it.’

  Stephen Farber and Marc Green praised the film in their book Hollywood on the Couch (1993). ‘Although there is no psychiatrist in the cast of characters, Twelve O’Clock High is one of the most propsychiatry movies of the period, for it convincingly demonstrates the shattering effects of emotional trauma.’

  Greg had an in-depth understanding of his character because he possessed the same duality of bravery and fear. ‘I’m not nearly as confident as those hero characters are,’ he admitted. ‘Although I think in films like Twelve O’Clock
High and The Guns of Navarone [1961], it seemed to me that I brought in a little ambivalence of character and vulnerability and self-doubt whenever there was an opening for it. But am I like these heroes in real life? No. Sometimes I’m courageous and sometimes less so.’

  Ironically, at this point in his life Greg was sorely in need of psychological counseling. He was drinking excessively, popping sleeping pills and in denial about the difficulties in his marriage. But there’s no record of him going into therapy and he was quite outspoken about his disdain for ‘Freudian stuff’ when it came to himself.

  Twelve O’Clock High is used today by the military and corporations to teach leadership and teambuilding skills. It is a study of how to become a self-actualizing cohesive unit, to plan a mission, make choices and succeed. The US Air Force Academy uses Twelve O’Clock High in its pilot training program. As one cadet put it: ‘This film demonstrates how military leadership has nothing to do with medals and parades, but is a constant battle to make a group of people do a thankless, inglorious job.’

  One thing was certain: Greg put in a damn good performance and he was not deserving of a nasty swipe Bette Davis took at him, even if it was made in the privacy of her home. Her husband Gary Merrill, a laid-back, easygoing, make-do man, had played an Air Force squadron commander in Twelve O’Clock High. He preferred to enjoy the pleasures of life than kill himself working, a mindset that did not sit well with nervous, perfectionist, hard-charger Bette. He said to her one day: ‘I wish I were Gregory Peck, so I’d only have to do one good movie a year and make some decent money.’ To which Davis growled, ‘If you’re going to pick an actor to be, at least pick a good one.’ The exchange sparked a fight. They separated a few weeks later.