Gregory Peck- A Charmed Life

by Lynn Haney

  ‘We got used to him cruising imperiously around the house, wearing a general’s hat and a corncob pipe clenched between his teeth. I suppose we should be thankful that he didn’t do this kind of thing while he was playing the role of Josef Mengele, the Nazi “Angel of death”.

  ‘I see him assume these personalities so enthusiastically, and sometimes think of what I’ve heard him say on a number of occasions – that many actors are shy people who find some comfort in hiding behind the mask of another personality. I think that could be said of him, though you wouldn’t know it to look at him.’

  Going into the film, Greg had high expectations. He hoped the picture would be an historical drama that would illuminate an era. His lofty goals and those of Frank McCarthy soon came into conflict with the economic projections of Universal. Staffing the production were professionals with the right credentials for making a film classic. The team of Richard Zanuck and David Brown were fresh from handling recent box-office hits: The Sting (1973) and Jaws (1975).

  Alas, the studio heads at Universal started to worry the film wouldn’t make a profit. They crippled the project with their paralyzing fear of financial failure. $5 million was shorn from the budget, which resulted in the film trading location shooting for local fabrications. Nearby Coronado Beach was good for the Philippines, a Japanese tea garden in Pasadena equal to Tokyo. For the House of Representatives there was an old Republic set, while the Broadway ticker tape parade scene employed documentary black-and-white footage with Peck superimposed in color. Fear made the producers hesitant about footage that might offend the British, the Japanese and the Pentagon. Fear edited the film from 144 minutes to 128.

  Throughout the production, Greg became the feisty educator for the integrity of MacArthur in the film. The writers would later accuse him of betraying the script, which he and McCarthy saw as the ‘fashionable ’70s put-down, full of distortions, shallowness and sarcasm.’ Letters flew back and forth from Greg to the producers, especially regarding MacArthur’s speeches and the one scene (cut then later restored) in which MacArthur tells the Russian representative in Tokyo to keep his hands off Japan. Particularly exasperating was the rendering of MacArthur’s farewell address to Congress; in 1951, the broadcast brought the country to a virtual standstill. In the film, Greg argued, the scene, ‘lacks all the sweep, emotion and grandeur of an impressive setting.’ Finally, resigned to the situation, he concluded: ‘I fought the good fight, to get as much quality as I could in the film. They were afraid of words, even eloquent words.’

  While Greg commanded US troops in the Philippines and laid waste to the Japanese on the set of MacArthur, Veronique went house hunting. Their place in Brentwood held so many haunting memories of Jonathan, as did their villa in Cap Ferrat. (It sold in 1977 for three times what the Pecks had paid for it.) She felt a new environment would help Greg to heal. One day she hit him with a surprise.

  Greg loved to tell this house story. He recited it over and over for years until he polished it to a fine luster. ‘We used to live in a house quite smaller than this one. I could have died there happily. But my wife, Veronique, called me at the set. We were filming the scenes where I’m speaking to the combined houses, during MacArthur’s famous “Old Soldiers Never Die” speech. It was a 12-minute speech, and boy, I knew that sucker upside down and sideways. I mean I really had it, and I was having a good old actor’s time, delivering it from all different camera angles.

  ‘In the middle of this, my wife calls and says, “I found our dream house!”

  ‘I said, “I didn’t know we were looking for a dream house.” ’

  Veronique went on to say somebody else was after it and Greg better hustle. Hearing this, he yelped: ‘You must be crazy! I’m doing “Old Soldiers Never Die!” Nothing can tear me away from this!’ She kept pleading, so Greg took a cab over to Holmby Hills in full MacArthur regalia – gold epaulettes, riding crop and hat. He strode on the property, surveyed the Norman-style house, glanced over at the swimming pool and tennis court and roared: ‘Buy it!’

  Veronique and the realtor ran after him and said: ‘B-b-but don’t you want to see the inside?’

  He said, ‘We’ll fix it!’ And left. That night, the deal was closed.

  ‘Now, I’ve never been decisive,’ explained Greg. ‘I’m very practical. I always like to chew on things – especially things as expensive as this place. So I’ve always felt it was General Douglas MacArthur who bought my house.’

  The mansion sat on four glorious acres in the best neighborhood in Los Angeles. Situated in the foothills of the Santa Monica mountains and slipped in between Bel Air and Beverly Hills off Sunset Boulevard, Holmby Hills is a square-mile enclave with 200 year-old eucalyptus, oak and sycamore trees shading stately Hollywood mansions, many of them built prior to the Second World War. The dwellings are some of the most extravagant in the United States. (The Pecks’ road, Carolwood Drive, has also given shelter to Elvis Presley, Telly Savalas and Sonny and Cher.) Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson lived near the Pecks, but ‘near’ is a relative term in these parts considering the size of the properties.

  Residents are a cross-section of old Los Angeles from grand dames (Betsey Bloomingdale) to current industry notables (Danny DeVito). Almost none of the lots is smaller than one acre, and several overlook the Los Angeles Country Club. Except for the annoying tour buses that creep through every half-hour, Holmby Hills retains a sense of seclusion and privacy, in part because virtually every mansion is poised behind hedges and iron security gates equipped with electronic surveillance cameras. In 1982, Aaron Spelling caused raised eyebrows in this ’hood when he paid $10.5 million for the 4-acre Gordon Kaufmann-designed Bing Crosby house, which he tore down in order to build his famous mansion. The renovated structure, which cost $50 million, boasts two Olympic-sized swimming pools plus an indoor ice-skating rink. It’s just a tad smaller than the White House. Rumor had it that his daughter, Tory, moved out because she couldn’t find a room she liked.

  Although MacArthur received a lukewarm reception, Greg’s performance was applauded. Reviewing it in the Los Angeles Times, Charles Champlin noted: ‘Inevitably, the riveting interest stems from the masterful performance of Gregory Peck . . . his most impressive performance since To Kill a Mockingbird.’ Leonard Maltin also sang his praises: ‘solid, absorbing, and a flamboyant military chief . . . Peck is excellent . . .’ For Greg, MacArthur was a ‘lost opportunity’ that nevertheless, with each passing year, seems to be winning respect.

  At the time it was released, Jack Kroll of Newsweek gave a balanced review that still holds up. He said MacArthur ‘doesn’t have the flair and panache of Patton but in many ways it cuts deeper and churns up more food for thought. This prosaic, limited, naggingly honest film finally achieves a strangely touching quality, thanks mainly to Gregory Peck, whose voice and bearing evoke exactly the “transcendent sincerity and essential rectitude” that historian Trumbull Higgins found in one of the most enigmatic heroes in American history. MacArthur is hardly a brilliant film, but it has a certain dogged integrity, and the figure of MacArthur as hero and bogeyman remains a crucial one.’

  ‘Dogged integrity’ was also manifest in Greg off screen. He had to force himself to get through each day still weighed down by grief over Jonathan. William Arnold, movie critic for the Seattle Post Intelligencer interviewed Greg a year or so after Jonathan’s death. It was at West Point, where Greg was publicizing MacArthur. Arnold’s wife was heavily pregnant at the time and she was with him. Arnold recalled Greg was drawn to her in a curious, fatherly way: ‘In fact, he soon lost all interest in hyping MacArthur and instead wanted to talk to us about the responsibilities of parenthood.

  ‘ “Nothing you do in your life will be as important as the time you spend with that child,” I can still see that Lincolnesque figure telling me in that distinctively august voice, tears brimming in his eyes. “I learned this the hard way. Don’t let it happen to you.”’

  Arnold realized he was thinking abo
ut Jonathan. Finally, a studio underling pulled Greg away. He paused for several awkward moments, then he put his hand on Arnold’s wife’s stomach and said, ‘Have a good life.’

  Greg had always been willing to go out of his way to play the porter for the passage, to do what he could to make things easier for people in their life’s journey. Now, with the loss of Jonathan, he was making even more of an effort to extend a helping hand, especially to the young.

  In the late 1970s movie critic Susan Granger’s daughter, Janet, applied to Amherst in Massachusetts, a liberal arts college renowned for talented students. The girl was a good student but needed a recommendation from someone with a connection to the school. ‘Unfortunately, we knew no one,’ said Susan Granger, ‘No one at all. Except Gregory Peck. His son Tony was an upperclassman there.’

  Greg had never met the Grangers’ daughter, Janet. And he made it a firm policy never to recommend anyone he didn’t personally know. To complicate matters, the Grangers lived in Southern Connecticut. So he suggested they bring their daughter Janet to meet his plane on a flight that had a stopover for several hours in New York en route to Europe. While Granger and her husband sat at a table at one end of a restaurant, Greg dined with Janet at the other. He then wrote a highly enthusiastic letter. She was accepted.

  A gracious gesture to be sure, but Greg didn’t stop there. He asked his son Tony to act as Janet’s big brother at Amherst and show her the ropes. So when the Grangers pulled up to the door with their incoming freshman Tony was waiting for them. He brought along his buddy whom he introduced as P Albert (aka Prince Albert of Monaco, who was also a student at the school). The two upperclassmen cheerfully lugged Janet’s suitcases and boxes up two flights to her assigned room. Trip after trip. Back and forth. What an introduction to college!

  In Greg’s next film, The Boys From Brazil (1978), he was given the opportunity to play against type – big time. ‘Villain’ hardly suggests the historic treachery of Dr Josef Mengele who carried out horrifying experiments on prisoners in the Nazi death camps and sent an estimated 2.5 million Jews to their deaths at the Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp. Afterwards he escaped to South America (reportedly living in Paraguay).

  Ira Levin’s book, on which the screenplay was based, is a fictional account of Mengele’s discovery of a method of cloning Hitler from samples of the Führer’s blood, and his plan to establish a Fourth Reich. In addition to playing opposite Laurence Olivier, the role gave Greg a chance to forget about subtle acting and ‘chew up the scenery.’

  British producer Sir Lew Grade was churning out blockbuster packages with salable stories and high-profile casts. To be sure, Greg, Olivier, James Mason, and Lilli Palmer fit that bill. Drafting the film was Franklin Schaffner, a name familiar to fans of big movies: Planet of the Apes (1968), Patton (1970), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) and Papillon (1973).

  Mengele may have been strange, interesting and flamboyant, but why would Greg, the quintessential good guy, agree to play one of the most evil, wicked, malevolent men in the world? When the question was put to him, he responded: ‘One, because it was an opportunity to remind people of the Nazi holocaust, and two, because it’s a plum role, a bravura role of spectacular proportions.’

  Yes, but this man was a monster. How could Greg identify with a person like that? ‘There is evil in all of us – resentment, jealousy, greed, hatred,’ he said. ‘Even though you don’t commit unspeakable crimes, you can play on traits, bring them to the fore, so to speak.’

  Greg further explained: ‘Mengele was a loathsome rat, one of the most despicable characters in history. I really couldn’t get close to him emotionally, so I resorted to a lot of technique and went after Mengele to make him as hateful as I could . . . But the great fun was working with Laurence Olivier. That’s really why I did it.’

  Olivier, on the other hand, was in it for the money. Between children, houses and travel, the bills were mounting. Also, his health was in jeopardy. Just before his departure from England, Olivier collapsed at his home in Brighton and was admitted to hospital in acute pain from an attack of kidney stones. When released, he felt dreadfully ill and looked awful. His gaunt and pained expression would give added poignancy to his role as Ezra Lieberman, a Viennese Jewish Nazi hunter.

  Throughout the production, Olivier never complained. He saw himself as a ‘physical actor,’ motivated from the outside and contrary to the Method precepts of Stanislavsky or Lee Strasberg. That physicality made for memorable impressions and Olivier held to that acting style during The Boys From Brazil.

  Greg was very conscious of Olivier’s condition and altered his acting accordingly. For example, in the final climactic scene, Olivier gets into hand-to-hand combat with Greg. Wounded by Mengele’s gunshot, Lieberman was to turn, stagger and collapse near a couch.

  After rehearsals and several takes for various camera angles, Olivier finished the scene of the fierce wrestling match with Greg, who tried not to grasp his partner’s hands or put too much of his weight on Olivier’s sensitive skin. ‘Nice faking,’ Greg said supportively, helping him to his feet. ‘Just like Tristan and Isolde,’ whispered Olivier in mock flirtation.

  A host of reviewers howled at Greg’s Mengele. Pauline Kael’s caustic review in The New Yorker is but one example. ‘Who could accept John Wayne or James Stewart – or Gregory Peck . . . as a Nazi sadist? Peck strides into The Boys From Brazil with stiff black hair, beady little eyes (one squintier than the other), a chalky complexion, and a thin mustache that seems to be coming out of his nose. When an actor like Gregory Peck plays a sadistic Nazi geneticist and speaks in an arch-villain’s sibilant German accent, you can’t keep from laughing. Peck, in his jungle hide-away, staring into the future as he walks unconcernedly among the mutants he has created, just doesn’t have it in him to inspire primitive terror; his effects are all on the surface, and he looks particularly bad because he’s playing opposite Laurence Olivier, who is the aged hero, a famous Nazi-hunter (a fictional counterpart of Simon Wiesenthal).’

  Greg bristled at the criticism. ‘I felt, Laurence Olivier felt, friends of mine like Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon felt, that I was good in this part. Some critics seem unwilling to accept actors when they break what they think is the mold or the image.’

  Around this time journalist Steven Rubio confronted Greg with an intriguing question. ‘At some point, thinking of the awful Boys From Brazil, I asked Mr Peck if he ever got into a movie, saw it was going to stink and decided that at least he could have some fun with his role. No, he assured me, that would be unfair to the audience. His job was to do his best, no matter what the circumstances; his audience expected no less . . . But his answer explained the problem: he was so worried about his audience that he never allowed for the possibility that in a piece of shit like The Boys From Brazil, we were all in on the joke, and soon he ended up looking foolish for trying to do his best. Meanwhile, in the same film, Laurence Olivier tarted up his role as if it were more fun than having a three-way with Vivien Leigh and Danny Kaye. The result? Olivier is the only thing worth seeing in the entire film.’

  As his youngest children matured, Greg tried to help them without stifling their initiative. He arranged for Tony to work on the set of The Boys From Brazil, as an assistant director, and for Cecilia to take photographs as an assistant to the still cameraman. He predicted that when she graduated from Princeton she would become a professional photographer. She had already done a layout for Vogue with Greg modeling his favorite ‘best dressed man about town’ clothes.

  Carey and Stephen had lived with Greta while they were growing up and now Greg wanted to draw them closer to him. ‘When you have a second marriage, it’s not unusual for the kids from the second union to usurp the ones from the first,’ said a friend of Stephen’s. ‘Veronique was very territorial,’ explained Nancy Stesin. ‘They were her kids and her house.’

  When Carey decided to run for US Congress, as a Democrat against Robert K Dornan, Greg backed him 100 per cent. A gr
aduate of Georgetown University with a degree in foreign service, he was hooked on politics while working on John Tunney’s successful 1970 campaign for US Senate along with his brother Jonathan. After stints as a Voice of America announcer and two years with the Peace Corps in Senegal, Carey was hired by Senator Walter Mondale to work on the US Senate Committee on education. He then decided to return to California and run as a candidate from his home state’s 27th district, a strip of beach cities that extends 37 miles down the coast. (During the campaign, Carey married Kathy Katz, the 25-year-old manager of the Westwood Art Gallery.)

  Greg made it a point to stay away from the hustings, but he figured it would be equally ‘ostentatious’ to do nothing. So Carey found himself with a formidable pair of co-chairmen, Greg and former California governor Pat Brown. Senator Ted Kennedy and Pat Moynihan trekked more than 3,000 miles from Washington to Los Angeles to campaign for Carey. Losing the election, Carey tried unsuccessfully to defeat Dornan two years later.

  Stephen had graduated from Northwestern with a degree in speech and communication. He was now working in television as one of the producers of a weekly nostalgia program, That’s Hollywood.

  Greg’s personal life was beginning to reach an equilibrium. In 1978, he told an interviewer from Women’s Own magazine: ‘I don’t really want to sound like a benevolent poppa, but I do get a deep joy, deep gratification, out of seeing my children growing up well and standing on their own feet, having opinions of their own and being attractive people and personalities in their own right.’

  As the years went by, Greg’s circle of show business intimates dwindled. Death thinned the ranks. Two people to whom he grew closer in his later years were Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. With them, he could laugh, reminisce and play father confessor. There was no strain of presenting a public façade. And with a personality as revered by fans as Greg’s, the strain was considerable. Said Stephen: ‘My father has had to create and live up to a persona that matches, or at least comes close to, the worldwide perception people have of him through his films.’