Gregory Peck- A Charmed Life

by Lynn Haney

  Greg explained the family routine to the reporter: ‘Early in the evening is my play hour with the boys; they have an early dinner and then to bed. I am not a “romper,” but we have some good times together just the same . . . The boys do not have dinner with us except on special occasions. That is the one time of the day when Greta and I have a chance to talk.’

  Greg went on to explain that Jonathan was attending public school. As a couple, they favored ‘good-sized classes where there isn’t much individual attention and where he has a chance to shift for himself. Greta has been a member of the PTA and I make it a point to drop in and visit his schoolroom occasionally, when I arrive a little early to pick him up.’

  Then Greg told the reporter about an interest of Jonathan’s that didn’t appear to be alarming at the time. However, in the light of Jonathan’s tragic death in 1975 by self-inflicted gunshot, it is prophetic. ‘He has dozens of technical questions about guns, which fascinate him,’ explained Greg. ‘They fascinate most boys and it seems to be a natural interest. Rather than fight it, I’m going to teach him how to use one. He’s been promised a BB gun when he’s eight and a .22 when he’s ten, and I’ll take him out into the woods and teach him how to shoot. That’s better than letting him go along fascinated by guns, but knowing nothing about handling them. That’s just plain foolhardy – dangerous.’

  It was hard to get away from the studio pressure on actors and actresses to conform to the image that they were just regular folks by day who transformed into gods and divas by night. Often reality had to be adjusted to fit the image. Sid Avery, the iconic Hollywood photographer of the 1950s and 1960s remembers arriving to photograph Marlon Brando for a spread on the actor’s supposedly normal ‘everyday life.’ He wanted to take a picture of Brando in the kitchen, but it was filthy. ‘It was up to your chest in old bags and paper cartons and a lot of other things,’ said Avery. ‘I don’t think he’d ever cleaned it, and I hinted, if you’d just clean up your act a little bit, then we could take pictures.’ The result: a homey shot of one of Hollywood’s biggest stars taking out the trash.

  Yet, when stars went out on the town, the studios insisted they shine like supernovas and encouraged them to huddle together in order to generate more glitter: no hobnobbing with underlings. Shelly Winters remembered: ‘There were definite rules on how stars were supposed to behave when they were out in public. You are to be photographed only with someone as important or more important than yourself.’

  Given specific instructions by Universal on the proper conduct of a star, Winters went to a cocktail party that preceded the Golden Globe awards. She recalled she was ‘looking gorgeous and chatting with gorgeous Gregory Peck. We were discussing something banal, and a character actor I knew stopped by, said hello and joined us and improved the conversation.’ Just then, one of the foreign photographers wanted to take a picture. Winters was dismayed by what followed: ‘Gregory Peck edged me away from the unimportant character actor so that we two stars could pose by ourselves – it would be safer for our careers. No doubt Peck had been given the same pep talk by the Selznick publicity office and was trying to obey his orders. I was offended. If being a star meant I couldn’t associate with character actors, who weren’t stars, I wanted no part of this kind of studio system.’

  True, Greg did what he could to accommodate both the studios and the press. And the gods rewarded him. In January 1951 he received the Henrietta, an award from the Foreign Press Association, proclaiming him the world film favorite, based on a world-wide poll that garnered more than a million votes.

  In theory, Greg should have been able to ease up on his killer work hours. ‘I had so many contracts, managers and agents that I felt more like a corporation than an actor,’ said Greg of the years he had put behind him. ‘That’s when I determined to ride out my commitments and work towards becoming an individual again.’

  The script for The World in His Arms (1952) entertained Greg so thoroughly that he accepted the offer to star in it less than an hour after he finished reading it. (An added inducement was his guaranteed $100,000 and part of the profits.) Adapted from a novel by adventure writer Rex Beach, it was an action-packed yarn to be directed by Raoul Walsh, who was just right for the fast-moving tempo of the story. ‘A picture needs action, action and more action,’ said Walsh at the time. ‘That was the theme of the earliest picture and it’s the theme of the successful ones today. Keep things happening on the screen.’

  In this adventure story, Greg tries to buy Alaska from the Russians but settles instead for Ann Blyth, one of the lesser-known Romanovs. The so-called historical background (seal fisheries and Russian commercial imperialism) was an excuse for swashbuckling melodrama, which involved battles royal, wild sea chases, and prodigious amounts of drinking and boasting.

  Walsh’s directorial style included lots of drinking and action as well. He liked to act out his scenes behind the camera while his actors were performing in front of it. In fact, he was known to lose as much as 15 pounds during the production on a picture with his blow-for-blow offstage antics. Greg was a hearty admirer of his impromptu vaudeville act, referring to Walsh as a ‘one-man stock company.’ When Greg blew his lines in the middle of a sequence, he excused himself by saying he was only waiting for Walsh to catch up with him. On lunch breaks Walsh fueled his spirits with spirits and Greg usually joined him for a couple of stiff belts over steak.

  ‘Dutch courage’ came in handy. Walsh, a veteran actor, stipulated that a fight scene in a motion picture had to measure up to the standards set by him when he was appearing in such scenes himself. ‘In those days we had to really put on a show,’ reminisced Walsh. ‘I hadn’t been in the business ten years before I had broken both arms – one of them twice – had my nose broken three different times, and had been knocked absolutely unconscious more times than a punch-drunk fighter.’

  Even with such a stellar role model, Greg was no Errol Flynn. He just couldn’t throw caution to the winds when brandishing a sword or pummeling someone with his fists. Theater Arts magazine wrote him off as a ‘prim’ swashbuckler.

  Thank God for Ava Gardner! Just when there was a possibility Greg’s life could disintegrate into humdrum routine she showed up, this time cast opposite him in the screen adaptation of a superb Ernest Hemingway short story, The Snows of Kilimajaro (1952). By this time, Gardner had been married to Frank Sinatra for eight weeks and dramas in her personal life were playing out a mile a minute. She was sorely in need of Father Peck’s pastoral counseling.

  Since The Snows of Kilimanjaro was a slim story, screenwriter Casey Robinson took it upon himself to pick his way through Hemingway’s body of work and lift here and there to fill out his script. Naturally, ‘Papa’ didn’t take well to this idea. He fumed: ‘I sold Fox a single story, not my complete works. This movie has something from nearly every story I ever wrote.’ He took to calling it The Snows of Zanuck.

  While Hemingway didn’t play a part in the shaping of the movie, he did ask Zanuck to cast Ava Gardner as Cynthia Green. Papa had admired her performance in The Killers, a 1946 film based on his short story and, in fact, referred to her as the greatest actress in films.

  In the movie, Greg plays Harry Street, a writer with whom Greg shared similarities in personality – a burning temper and melancholy moods. Harry languishes on his deathbed thanks to a gangrened leg. A writer of too easy popular success, he reviews his life with much bitterness. He lies on the slope of Africa’s famous mountain and thinks back on his life while awaiting medical attention. ‘Africa’ is this case is a back screen projection; fortunately, the majority of the film is told through flashbacks set in France, Spain, and parts of the ‘Dark Continent.’ Harry’s relationships with various women (played by Susan Hayward, Ava Gardner, and Hildegard Knef ) are at the center of his recollections, but the overall thesis is a very Hemingway-esque summary of the responsibility of a writer to get to the truth. His Harry is a thoroughly honest and courageous, but confused and somewhat embittered twen
tieth-century man. The film paints a wide canvas of his involvement in the Spanish Civil War, in game hunting and after that, in the frivolous fun and games of international high society.

  If The Snows of Kilimanjaro was made today, the crew would go straight to Africa. As it was, they played in front of a big set against the painting of Mount Kilimanjaro which went two-thirds the way around the sound stage, creating massive problems for the sound technicians. Then they put in trees, brush, tents – all sorts of things – to make it look like Africa. The trees and foliage had to move, there were wires and wind machines everywhere. When hunting wild game, Greg found himself shooting against a blank screen.

  Casey Robinson’s job was to put words in Greg’s mouth that came tripping off the tongue. ‘I was worried that his propensity to think words through, in this case, would make them seem false,’ remembered Robinson. ‘I was in great doubt about my screenplay, which used a stream of consciousness method with many flashbacks, new to the screen. There was no time pattern. I guess we both were a bit wrong, for it turned out to be one of Peck’s best films, and it amassed a box-office record, up to that time, for Twentieth Century Fox.’

  While making the movie, Greg’s name was linked with German actress Hildegard Knef. Even Robinson claimed Greg ‘was experimenting with all kinds of dames on the set.’ In the case of Knef, however, she was by no means an easy ‘dame’ with which to experiment. ‘Through the profession of acting I was catapulted to Hollywood,’ Knef reminisced, ‘where I thought the war was over and everybody loved everybody. I found out nobody loves anybody, and the resentment against the Germans was so tremendous it made me absolutely speechless. I was put on ice and dragged out every time they needed a glamorous spy for a Darryl Zanuck movie. I went from a dictatorship to a dictatorship operetta.’

  Gardner came to the production but with strings attached. Sinatra’s career had hit a low ebb, and he wanted her with him. When the shooting went over the allotted ten days of her contract, Sinatra and Gardner revolted in the midst of a battle scene, which involved more than 400 extras. Robinson blamed Sinatra: ‘I hated the little bastard because he was making my girl unhappy.’ Gardner confessed to Robinson that she did not understand some of the language and the thought processes of her character, but she succeeded with it quite nicely and launched her career as an international star. Hemingway told her: ‘The only two good things in it were you and the hyena.’

  Stick it in your ear, Papa! The critics loved Greg. For him, The Snows of Kilimanjaro represented a peak in his career. It marked his return to playing a sturdily American character, where most critics felt his true strength resided. While he still had rough going ahead of him in his personal life, professionally the best was yet to come.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  When in Rome – and Paris

  ‘Half a century ago a coal miner who found himself in a fashionable restaurant would not have the faintest idea of how to behave; nowadays he has only to ask himself, “How would Gregory Peck do it?”’

  Frederick Lewis Allen, The Big Change

  Her name was Veronique Passani, and she was stunning. Greg would never forget the first time he met her in the spring of 1952. He was on his way to Rome to film Roman Holiday (1953), a light comedy about a runaway princess and a suave newspaperman with ulterior motives. She was a fledgling reporter on assignment for France Soir. And this assignment was a feather in her cap.

  Greg was at the height of his fame. Many people considered him to be the handsomest man on the planet. The French press tagged him ‘No. 1 Great Screen Lover.’ He deserved the title, they said, not for his romantic fire, but for the finesse he displayed in any love scene. The French love finesse. So there was much curiosity about the star.

  ‘We had lunch on the Left Bank in Paris in a bistro,’ he remembered. ‘She was 19, and I was 36 years old. She was a journalist, and I was immediately attracted to her.’

  Veronique was a petite Parisian with great almond eyes, raven hair and an intriguing smile. She was also coy, careful not to unnerve Greg with a barrage of questions. Perhaps she had heard he reacted to the journalistic interrogation process like a patient strapped to a dentist’s chair, flinching, squirming and grimacing. So she waited patiently and looked at him worshipfully as he found the right words to express himself.

  Her technique worked. He spoke knowledgeably and thoughtfully in that deep, almost hypnotic voice. ‘We just talked,’ he remembered. ‘There was sort of a wonderful gaze and a deep intelligence and great poise about her, though she was only 20.’

  When he recollected this meeting, Greg referred to it as ‘the luckiest day of my life.’ He didn’t mention Greta was with him. Yet, according to Greta, Veronique interviewed both of them. Of course, it might not have been that interview she was referring to. It could have taken place in Rome. Veronique popped up there and interviewed Greg for France Soir while he was on location. And Greta said she had seen the French woman five or six times. In any case, the stage was set for a long hot summer.

  Riding the express train from Paris to Rome with Greta and the boys, Greg was filled with high spirits. Everything was falling into place. Ever since the European filming of Captain Horatio Hornblower, he had been itching to live in Europe for a while. Now his dream was being realized partly through the auspices of the Internal Revenue! They had recently put through a ruling that if you lived abroad for 18 months you didn’t have to pay US income taxes. So Greg was joining the exodus of movie stars who started to take up residence in Paris, London and Rome. His plan was to stay there with his family for at least a year and a half.

  Roman Holiday also offered him the opportunity to star in a film comedy, a welcome change from the heavier stuff he’d been doing. And, what’s more, the reverse Cinderella plot had the earmark of a winner.

  As the story begins, Princess Anne (Audrey Hepburn), who is the daughter of a king of an unnamed European country, is touring the capital cities of Europe. Her life is one long round of appearances on behalf of her country’s government. To make matters worse, the lovely young princess is constantly being ordered about by her guardians, and even the maids, who all want her to act decorously and to be exposed only to things that are suitable for a princess.

  Anne, on the other hand, aches to experience life. So she simply breaks loose one evening on a visit to Rome and flees her country’s embassy. Unfortunately, her maid had popped a heavy tranquilizer in her nightly glass of warm milk, and the drowsy Anne falls unconscious out on a public bench. Tough guy news reporter Joe Bradley (Peck), who is an American assigned to Rome and is perpetually broke, takes pity on her. What can he do but take her to his apartment to sleep it off ? The next day he discovers who she is, but hoping to get a big story that will boost his career, he teams up with a photographer (Eddie Albert) and they give the princess a truly hilarious Roman holiday, while gleefully snapping pictures for their ‘exclusive.’

  A catchy story indeed, but little did Greg know it would become one of the most charming, whimsical and beautiful comedies ever brought to the screen. And the reason for that, of course, had much to do with the splendid directing of William Wyler and the film’s exquisite female lead, a Belgian ingénue named Audrey Hepburn.

  Hepburn was born in Brussels as Edda Kathleen van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston, the daughter of a Belgian countess and a British banker. Trained as a dancer, she played the cigarette girl in the opening scene of Charles Crichton’s Lavender Hill Mob and, while acting in Jean Boyer’s Nous Irons a Monte-Carlo in Paris, had been chosen by Colette herself to play the title role in the future musicalization of Gigi. Soon, she caught the eye of Hollywood.

  One of the people who noticed her was William Wyler. He’d picked up the Roman Holiday project from Frank Capra and he knew that in order to pull it off he needed an actress with continental poise. After looking around in London and interviewing several girls, Wyler decided to test Hepburn. She had a delightful affectation in voice and delivery that was controlled just enough to
have charm and serve as a trademark, as well as the looks and poise to make her role of a princess of a not-too-mythical-country come over strongly. Although the studio was pressuring him to use Elizabeth Taylor, he decided on Hepburn.

  However, Wyler did have some initial reservations. After viewing her screen test, he told Hepburn, ‘I thought you were a bit fat.’ She admitted it was absolutely true at the time of testing. ‘I ate everything in sight, having been undernourished during the war. You know, whole boxes of chocolates. I was ten pounds more than I ever weighed in my life. It’s funny to think I might not have gotten the part because I was too fat, because from then on everybody thought I was too thin.’ Separately, Hepburn also heard that Wyler ‘stuck his neck out’ for her because she was ‘not only an unknown, but a thoroughly inexperienced unknown.’

  Wyler was able to get Audrey Hepburn because the signing of Gregory Peck satisfied Paramount’s demands for a star with marquee value. ‘According to Hollywood mathematics, now that I had a male star, I didn’t need a stellar leading lady. I wanted a girl without an American accent to play the princess, someone you could believe was brought up as a princess.’

  Greg, too, gave her career a big push. ‘In those days stars had approval of script and co-actors,’ said Hepburn. ‘Greg could have said at the time, “She’s just a little dancer, and perhaps we’d better get someone more established.”’

  Alighting from the train in Rome, Greg helped Greta settle the children with their nurse in a hotel, then the couple took a moonlight stroll through the Eternal City. The next morning they moved into the beautiful villa – complete with waterfall – they rented in Albino, 25 miles outside the capital.