by Lynn Haney
It’s interesting to note Greg’s reactions to zigzagging across the country in Henry King’s Beechcraft plane as they made their way from Los Angeles to Florida and back again. Watching King man the instruments, Greg felt shaky. And the weather didn’t help. Big thunderheads were rolling by above as King – an expert flier – went 150 miles out of his way to duck the weather. Admitted Greg, ‘I was a little jumpy about being up there in a single-engine craft. Henry seemed to me like an old man. Actually, he was a very hale 63 but to me that was old. I thought, “This man might have a heart attack up here at 12,000 feet.” So I watched closely. And I watched the things on the radio, as we crossed over different towns. I was glued to those little levers and dials. I had on a pair of ear phones and I told myself if he suddenly became ill or had a heart attack, I might have a chance of getting myself down.’
If Greg was going to risk his life with anybody, he was happy to do it with King. Reflecting on the six movies he eventually made with the director, Greg said of Twelve O’Clock High, The Gunfighter (1950), David and Bathsheba (1951), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), The Bravados (1958), and Beloved Infidel (1959): ‘These pictures reflect on honor, integrity, being true to your word, living up to your commitments. They say don’t lie; don’t cheat; don’t use anybody; be open-hearted and generous; do your duty; be a man – what some people would now think of as old-fashioned virtues. We never articulated these precepts; we never said: “Now we are going to reflect these values.”
‘I could have gone on doing what I did in Twelve O’Clock – the martinet with the heart of gold; the hard driver, but the fellow who was doing it for good reasons, for an honest cause.’
The Gunfighter was Greg’s next film. In it he gives a great performance. As the movie opens to a wishful air played softly on a mouth organ, the introduction scrolls on the screen:
‘In the Southwest of the 1880s the difference between death and glory was often but the fraction of a second. This was the speed that made champions of Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, and Wild Bill Hickok. But the fastest man with a gun who ever lived, by many contemporary accounts, was a long, lean Texan named Ringo.’
The desperado rides into a no-name town in the middle of nowhere for a drink. At this point in his life, fast-gun Ringo is trying to overcome his bloody past. But he’s challenged by an ambitious ‘squirt’ and shoots the kid down, whereupon he fades into the darkness again. Weary and despairing, he laments, ‘I just want to be somewhere else!’
Greg’s professional gunslinger could pass for any one of those lean, frowning, mustachioed Westerners who stare so flatly out of nineteenth-century tintypes. Waiting for his last chance at having a real home, he sweats it out in yet another bar, staring bleakly into nothing. He has risked his life for a reunion with his estranged wife and child only to be doomed by his fate. In a compelling swan song, he exonerates his youthful assassin so that the punk may live to follow his ‘sire’s’ haunted path: ‘Just wait,’ he says to the boy, as the gunfighter is surprised in death.
The genesis of The Gunfighter, however, is rooted as much in an American masculine mystique of the Western gunfighter as in the tradition of the American bad man. Andre de Toth was a dashing Hollywood figure involved since the early 1930s in the direction and occasional writing of films. Among his close friends de Toth numbered three-times world heavyweight champion, Joe Louis, and actors Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart. De Toth noticed a curious thing: every time he accompanied Flynn to a nightclub inevitably someone would challenge Flynn, someone who wanted to demonstrate his prowess for his date. Bogart, he said, was especially vulnerable because ‘Bogey couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag.’ De Toth observed the same phenomenon when he went out to public places with Louis. Perhaps as part of the provocation a troublemaker would make a remark to the effect that ‘You don’t look so tough to me.’ De Toth realized that after a while his friends quit going out to public places because of the risk of such competitive challenges. The more he reflected on this phenomenon, the more he became sure that here was the heart of a screenplay.
De Toth took the idea to a friend who was also a scriptwriter, William Bowers. They collaborated on The Gunfighter using ideas about the Old West derived from original sources. The hero would be a man upon whom the countless incarnations of Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp and other gunmen had been patterned. Like Joe Louis, he would be at the top of his line of work; and like Louis he would discover that the champ is constantly in the presence of challengers. They had an actor specifically in mind for the role, an actor who, like the hero, was now on the other side of the climacteric. His name was Gary Cooper.
The script reached Darryl Zanuck’s desk. He went over the script with Nunnally Johnson who was to produce it: ‘It could be made just as it is and it would be a hell of a good and rather unusual Western. I do feel, however, that this can emerge as a real classic in the field . . . as powerful as Stagecoach . . .’
Zanuck envisioned the film in sepia color with somber touches. But he didn’t like the idea of going outside the studio to secure Cooper. Twentieth Century Fox had a perfectly good male star who also projected strength and integrity. Why not cast Gregory Peck instead? De Toth and Bowers worried he was too intellectual and contemplative.
At some point before the final version of the script (to which King also made his contribution) Greg was offered the leading role; he wanted especially to work with Henry King, whose direction in Twelve O’Clock High had stretched his abilities.
Later, Greg recalled: ‘We particularly liked doing The Gunfighter. Early on, when we started preparing the picture and I had accepted the role, both of us decided that we wanted this fellow to look and dress in a motley collection of clothes like the people in the daguerreotypes of the early West. You see them with swallowtail coats and hard hats and ill-fitting homespun garments. They do not look like rodeo cowboys at all, and a very large number of the men wear beards and mustaches. So he and I decided that I should look like one of those fellows. We pored over all the books that we could find. Then located several models, long, lean, cut off, semi educated, early Westerners – people who might have come from the east or even as far away as Scotland. They were out there to try to make a better life. I put on a handlebar mustache and a funny-looking, corduroy coat. They gave me a soup bowl haircut, a 15 Center – not all romantic looking. Then we started.’
For this picture King did not insist on extensive location work since the movie swells on the landscape of the mind. Nevertheless he would have preferred shooting in Texas. But finally Lone Pine, California, was chosen for the desert watering-hole scenes. Closer to LA, the stark mountainous area was used for countless Westerns.
At this point in production, Zanuck, for some reason or another, was not around, and his assistant, Spyros Skouras was in Europe. After The Gunfighter crew had gone a couple of weeks, Skouras came back. It was his custom to catch up on the rushes of current productions. He let out a howl when he saw Greg on the screen. He said, ‘What the hell is that? Who gave you that haircut? Who put a mustache on Gregory Peck? He’s a sex symbol. People don’t like men with mustaches. And that funny-looking haircut and that crazy-looking suit? And a black hat?’
‘He went into a rage about it, and the message came down to us on the set that Skouras would never forget it,’ Greg recalled. ‘For 20 years, every time I saw him it was: “You black Irishman. You! You ruined my picture.” I am half Irish, and he would say: “Anyway, you don’t even know who you are or what you are. You think the black Irish came from the sinking of the Spanish Armada. That’s pure shit. It comes from the Greeks who were there 2,000 years ago. Where do you think you got the name Gregory anyway?”’
When Zanuck returned to the studio, King and Johnson ran the picture for him. Silence followed the showing. Zanuck groaned that he would give $50,000 (sometimes the figure in King’s account is $40,000, sometimes $25,000) of his own money for Greg not to have that mustache. Zanuck was figuring the commercial consequence
s: ‘This man has a young following. That mustache, I’m afraid is going to kill it.’
Although The Gunfighter was recognized as a film of unusual quality when it appeared, its reputation gains luster with the passing years. In the 1980s, Bob Dylan wrote a song about it titled ‘Brownsville Girl,’ which pleased Greg and formed the basis of a friendship between the two men. One writer of Western films, Walter Kaufman, argued that The Gunfighter is the measure by which all Westerns would be judged. The film clearly instituted the trend in ‘adult’ Westerns. Just as Jesse James initiated a cycle of sympathetic outlaw protagonists, so The Gunfighter introduced so many weary gunfighters that the type has become a cliché. Another critic Allen Creek compared High Noon (1952) to King’s picture; he liked especially King’s ability to find ‘truth in every situation,’ and the sense of passing time without the looming clock faces so present in the latter film. Now the King picture is usually regarded as the better film.
With Greg as the outlaw loser Ringo, the story played out the cycle of the Greek tragedy. The action suggested Ringo’s hopes for his wife and himself, while pointing the way to his death by bloodshed. This is the tragedy of a man with a reputation from his past. He now wishes to return to normal life with a wife and the son to whom he cannot reveal his paternity. But he reaches the point of no return and he can only go on shooting. Only death can relieve him of his search to be freed from his reputation.
Indicative of the movie’s psychological probing is the fact that in this Western only three shots were fired. In the end, the cowardly young Hunt Bromley, intent on ruining Ringo’s reputation, and the shuttle of the horse and rider leaving the community signals the deadly start of a new cycle. While the business of the story is grim, it is alleviated with some comedy. Ringo, for example, remarks that the good ladies of the town seeking to punish the outlaw seemed, ironically, as cold-hearted and malicious in their planning as the worst of gunslingers.
Once released, The Gunfighter received excellent reviews but did weak box-office. In fact, the shortfall appeared to validate Zanuck’s estimate of public taste. For years, he and Skouras would accuse King and Greg and Johnson of letting ‘their mustache’ cost the studio a million dollars. As producer Johnson saw it, audiences, ‘brought up with Jesse James were probably put off by the relatively realistic depiction of Ringo, especially since The Gunfighter was one of the first films to begin to dismantle the popular myths of the West.’
The year 1950 was the Westerns’ watershed, marked by the release of Broken Arrow, Devil’s Doorway, Winchester ’73, Wagon Master, and The Gunfighter. Following kudos for his role in The Gunfighter, Greg was immediately offered the lead in High Noon. George Chasin, his agent, urged him to take it. ‘You’ve found the archetype,’ he said. ‘Stay with it and you’ll be another John Wayne.’ Greg turned it down and regretted it ever after. Gary Cooper won the Academy Award for it. Greg lusted for that golden statue. He said modestly, ‘I don’t think I would have been as good as Gary Cooper, but I still think it would have been a good film with me in it.’
At the time Greg felt it was too much like The Gunfighter and, what’s more, he didn’t want to be typecast as a cowboy. On the other hand, he knew that if you get in a groove you get better and better at it. Years later, he said: ‘That’s why those fellas were so magnificent playing the same part, because they’d played it 40 times. That’s why John Wayne finally became a good actor in True Grit [1969]: he’s got 150 of them behind him. Now he’s developed a saltiness and an earthiness and a humor and a subtlety that comes from mining that same vein over and over again.’
Although he came to deeply regret his decision in the light of the splendid success of High Noon, he did receive compensation – of sorts. The Reno Chamber of Commerce appreciated his cowboy panache, and named him the top Western star for 1950, and presented him with the Silver Spurs award. A miffed John Wayne barked at Greg: ‘Well, who the hell decided that you were the best cowboy of the year?’
Greg’s next film, Only the Valiant (1951) holds a singular distinction in his career – and personal life. It’s the film that leaves the bitterest taste in his mouth.
When Greg signed a contract with David O Selznick, there was the understanding that the actor would never have to appear in any film he opposed. But Selznick’s financial condition had become so desperate, he couldn’t ask for Greg’s approval. Among those he made available for loan were Greg, Jennifer Jones, Shirley Temple, Joseph Cotton and Louis Jourdan.
So one day in 1950 Selznick’s chief executive, Daniel O’Shea, told Greg to report to Warner Brothers for wardrobe tests. He would be starting a Western, Only the Valiant.
‘Wait a minute,’ Greg said. ‘That’s not the way my deal works. I have a nonexclusive contract.’
‘Yes, but David has one commitment left under your contract,’ O’Shea said, ‘and he sold it to Jack Warner. He needs the money. He’s committed to pay you $60,000, and Warner is paying $150,000. So David made a quick profit of $90,000.’
Feeling sorry for Selznick, Greg agreed to make the film for Warner Brothers. He was well aware of Warner’s reputation for making quick, cheap movies and he realized Only the Valiant would be a potboiler. The pioneering Warner clan started out in a rented vacant store in New Castle, Pennsylvania, christening their theater the Bijou. With 99 chairs borrowed from a nearby funeral parlor (nickelodeons always kept to the magic figure of 99 chairs because no theater license was needed for under 100 seats), Sam ran the projector, while Harry and Albert attended to business. Jack, starting at age 12, sang illustrated song-slides during reel changes.
At Warner’s, actors, directors and screenwriters worked at a pace more frantic than at the other major studios and usually at lower salaries. This often led to stormy clashes between management and employees. Wilson Mizner, a Hollywood wit who had been hired to write scripts at the studio, quipped: ‘Working for Warner Brothers is like fucking a porcupine – it’s one hundred pricks against one.’ He took a particularly dim view of the head of the operation. ‘Jack Warner has oilcloth pockets so he can steal soup.’
The picture was a torment for him. He hated being in it. And when a picture wasn’t going well he would go into one of his black moods at home. He was madder than a boiled owl. After the success of Twelve O’Clock High and The Gunfighter, the star found himself having to settle for a second-rate Western. But the worst part was his luscious co-star Barbara Payton. Sexually irresistible, she carried with her the seeds of his destruction.
In 1946, a term created by the French critics, film noir, came into vogue. Literally translated ‘black film,’ it was coined in recognition of a darkened somber mood that had begun to emerge in many films produced in America. These movies were made primarily between the early 1940s and the late 1950s, and were distinguished by their shadowy appearance, and overall mood of hopelessness, pessimism, suspicion and fear. The females in these flicks were often evil and, at the same time, demonstrated spellbinding attributes. They were hard-hearted. Femmes fatales. ‘Bad Blondes’ was a term bandied about at the time. Barbara Payton was a ‘Bad Blonde.’
In type Payton could be compared to Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield, but she never achieved the heights of her celebrated contemporaries. Of course, she never had their driving ambition. Plus, her unconventional lifestyle, public brawls and longtime bout with the bottle contributed to her eventual downfall. Her freewheeling personal pursuits and problems detracted from her ability to deliver a good performance. According to James Cagney who put her in a few movies including Only the Valiant, ‘Barbara was an actress of impressive if limited skill.’
Romantically, Payton had a lot of balls in the air. For a while she was involved with Bob Hope who, like Greg, was married. Hope dropped her; fearful her loose lips could do serious damage to his reputation.
Veteran B-movie actor Mickey Knox also dated Payton. He remembered her as a compulsive and passionate lover who ‘. . . kept me in bed once for three days and nights, even feeding me
[there]. She wouldn’t let me get out of bed! I had to crawl out on my hands and knees.’
Payton gained much publicity in 1951 when actors Franchot Tone and Tom Neil engaged in a fierce brawl for the right to date her. Tone landed in the hospital with a fractured cheekbone, broken nose, and concussion. He eventually married Payton, but the union lasted just one month and she returned to Neil. She said of Neil: ‘He was the only man I ever loved.’
Filmed on location in the New Mexico Desert, Only the Valiant deals with an Apache attack on a cavalry troop led by Captain Richard Lance (Peck). Although Payton’s part as Greg’s love interest was small, it gave her career a lift for a time before the booze and black eyes got to her.
Greg was part of her heyday. In her slushy memoir, she recalled: ‘I was sitting on top of the world. My particular acting talents were worth $10,000 a week, and I was in constant demand. I know it sounds unbelievable, but it’s true that Gregory Peck, Guy Madison, Howard Hughes and other big names were dating me. Almost everything I did made headlines.’
Payton claimed to be having an affair with Greg during the filming of Only the Valiant. And while he never denied it (the liaison was described as an affair in a biography Greg authorized), he never mentioned her name. She was not so discreet, sharing details about their relationship that eventually ended up in Confidential, a scandal magazine of the 1950s. Published by a flip, sharp, racy Broadway agent named Bob Harrison, it rehashed almost every Hollywood scandal. Determined to capitalize on the public’s yearning for gossip, Harrison ballyhooed Confidential and was eventually selling 3,700,000 copies on the newsstands – outselling even Reader’s Digest and TV Guide with his screaming headline articles.