Gregory Peck- A Charmed Life Read online

  But maybe he wouldn’t. His Broadway plays were of short duration. Doubt and insecurity haunted him. ‘When am I going to work again . . . if ever?’ Greg recalled, ‘I felt I was going up a one-way street into a blind alley. If I didn’t make it, what in God’s name would I do with myself?’

  Another caveat. Theater folk didn’t regard Hollywood as a step up. Legitimate thespians often dismissed film acting with contempt. Stolid British actor Cedric Hardwicke, who played with Greg in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), reflected: ‘I believe that God felt sorry for actors, so He created Hollywood to give them a place in the sun and a swimming pool. The price they had to pay was to surrender their talent.’

  With Greg, it was not so much snobbery as fear. The year before, he had flunked a screen test commissioned by none other than David O Selznick, the legendary producer of Gone With the Wind (1939). Selznick took one look at the test and fired off a memo to Kay Brown, his East Coast representative: ‘I don’t see what we could do with Gregory Peck . . . He photographs like Abe Lincoln, but if he has a great personality, I don’t think it comes through in these tests.’

  It’s ironic to think that Gregory Peck, later headlined as ‘The Most Handsome Man in the World’, possessed a face that once caused seasoned professionals to shake their heads. But such was the case. Even his mentor, Katharine Cornell, who regularly fed Greg roles, confessed to French actor Jean Pierre Aumont: ‘Poor Greg! I like him a lot but he’ll never make a picture to save his life. One of his ears is larger than the other.’

  In the jargon of the industry, Greg didn’t possess ‘bullet-proof camera angles’. Seen at a distance on the stage, he cut quite a figure with his great height complemented by shoulders so broad they looked padded. Up close, his features were large, irregular and gaunt. He had three perpendicular lines across his forehead and two perpendicular valleys in his cheeks. Still, the profile was vintage matinée idol and there was no denying he was darkly handsome in a morose sort of way. A few years later – after the world took notice of Greg – George Burns’ clever wife Gracie analyzed his magic: ‘It’s just eyes, nose and mouth. But what an assembly job!’

  Finally, Greg said ‘yes’ to Leland’s offer. The money looked too good and, besides, Hayward never accepted ‘no’ from anyone. Aside from his own concerns, Greg was determined to give his wife the best. He vowed: ‘As soon as I’m in the chips, I’m going to buy Greta a mink coat and then I’m going to get me a house on a hill and raise a flock of kids.’

  So the Pecks embarked for Los Angeles. Hayward put them up for ten days in a suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. Then, as now, the hotel was a gathering place for visiting royalty and Hollywood’s crème de la crème.

  Greg took to Hayward right off the bat. Most people did. Attractive and dashing with an air both haggard and elegant, Hayward stood out as an anomaly in the cut-throat world of Hollywood agents. He wore white flannel trousers and linen underwear and was the first Filmland executive to decorate his office with antiques. In his forties in the 1940s, his features were delicate, with a prominent nose and piercing blue eyes set off by an enthusiastic smile. His crew-cut gray hair gave him, according to Life magazine: ‘the aspect of an elderly Yale freshman.’

  ‘He could sell the proverbial snowball to the Eskimos,’ claimed Henry Fonda. Director William Wyler swore he ‘just charmed the birds off the trees, the money out of the coffers, and ladies into their beds.’ Leland’s ex-girlfriend Katharine Hepburn – also a client – pronounced him ‘the most wonderful man in the world’. In her gushy style, she later wrote that with Leland ‘nothing was a problem. There were solutions to everything. Joy was the constant mood. Everything was like a delightful surprise.’

  The studios wined and dined the Pecks and sent Greta little presents of candy and roses. In the daytime, she was free to bask on a chaise longue beside the hotel’s fabled pool sipping exotic drinks. (The cabana area would be featured in the 1957 movie, Designing Woman, starring Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall.)

  The mock paradise of Beverly Hills suited her just fine. At 32 and with one marriage already behind her, Greta was primed for the next stage in her life. She had seen enough of seedy living while touring the country as Katharine Cornell’s hairdresser. Now here was a chance to live a smart, luxurious lifestyle where the perfect climate provided a healthy place to raise children. Like Greg, Greta yearned to start a family.

  Meanwhile, Greg was getting a lightning tour of the major studios. It was the Golden Age of movies and each movie empire was turning out 70 or 80 films a year. ‘Studios had faces then,’ said the brilliant director Billy Wilder. ‘They had their own style. They could bring you blindfolded into a movie house and you opened [your eyes] and looked up and you knew, “Hey, this is an RKO picture. This is an MGM picture.”’

  Greg got a kick out of walking the Paramount lot. He said, ‘I was thrilled to stand there and watch people work.’ Resembling a country club, the studio was steeped in history. Here is where giants such as D W Griffith, Cecil B DeMille, Joseph Von Sternberg and Preston Sturges made movies that featured stars such as Mary Pickford, Clara Bow, Gary Cooper, Bing Crosby and Marlene Dietrich. Had he a crystal ball in his pocket, he would have known that in 1953, this studio would release one of his own all-time smash hits, Roman Holiday, with Audrey Hepburn.

  For many, Paramount best represented that great juncture of romance, glamour and illusion that typified the legendary studios of the past. Inside its gates, magic was created on a daily basis. Diehard fantasy lovers found it preferable to the real thing outside. Famed director Ernst Lubitsch once said: ‘I’ve been to Paris, France, and I’ve been to Paris, Paramount. Paris, Paramount, is better.’

  Being repressed, and needing the mask of a theatrical role to reveal true feelings, Greg was fascinated by the ruthless, bawdy and daring studio bosses. Not only did these men lead hurly-burly lives; they also had a way with words. Sometimes mangled, but, nonetheless, a way. People delighted in quoting their snappy phrases – even if they had never actually said what was ascribed to them.

  Here’s a sampling. Darryl Zanuck: ‘For God’s sake, don’t say “yes” until I’m finished talking.’ Louis B Mayer: ‘The number one book of the ages was written by a committee, and it was called the Bible.’ Harry Cohen: ‘I don’t have ulcers, I give them.’ Jack Warner: ‘I would rather take a 50-mile hike than crawl through a book.’ But in the bon mots department, nobody rivaled Sam Goldwyn. ‘A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.’ ‘I had a great idea this morning, but I didn’t like it.’ ‘You’ve got to take the bitter with the sour.’ ‘Gentlemen, include me out.’ ‘I’d hire the devil himself if he’d write me a good story.’ Finally, there was a command ascribed to just about every major producer in town: ‘Never let that bastard back in here – unless we need him!’

  The despotic studio chiefs ran their huge factories with contract players, and writers and directors constantly assigned, reassigned, and substituted. Since it took several years to groom a talent such as Gregory Peck, it was in the best interests of the studios to hang on to an actor until he matured. As one executive put it: ‘We are the only company whose assets all walk out the gate at night.’ To lock in their talent, the studio bosses pressured actors into signing seven year contracts; it was the maximum number of years the law allowed and the terms invariably worked in the producers’ favor. Some of those in bondage compared the studios to luxurious slave quarters in which they wore golden shackles.

  Of all the moguls, none was as powerful, notorious or feared as Louis B Mayer. Numerous myths, which Mayer cherished and cultivated, surrounded the man whose sobriquets ran from ‘Mister Movies’ to ‘that son-of-a-bitch, LB’. The stars in his stable had to submit to his histrionics and conniving if they wanted to survive.

  The experience of German-born star Luise Rainer is but one example. She won the Academy Award for best actress in The Great Ziegfeld in 1936 and for The Good Earth in 1937. Rather than helping
her career, her double Oscar success meant she was offered poor films that needed a star to give them a boost. And because she was tied into a contract with MGM, she had no choice in which movies she made. She grew so frustrated that she famously walked out on the contract, which prompted Louis B Mayer to threaten: ‘We made you and we can kill you.’

  Imagine if you will the setting in which Greg’s encounter with Louis B Mayer took place. The actor was ushered through huge walnut doors into the producer’s office. There he beheld a 60foot-long plush white carpet leading to a desk that was white leather and crescent-shaped. Quipped Sam Goldwyn: ‘You needed an automobile to reach his desk.’ There sat Mayer, a chubby little man with beady eyes, rimless glasses on a chain and the dimpled hands of a cardinal.

  The mogul was seated between a map of the world and two flags. Behind him, like some gigantic crest, was a window with a commanding view of the grounds surrounding the studio. These cardboard landscapes held wonders such as a Swiss village, the Chicago underworld and the canals of Venice.

  ‘Initially, he used the fatherly approach with me,’ recalled Greg, ‘pointing out, quite emotionally, how he had sired the careers of actors like Mickey Rooney, Robert Taylor and Judy Garland. When I declined to budge, he shifted his campaign to an attack against the legitimate theater, demeaning my career in it in the process.

  ‘Noting that this wasn’t getting results, Mayer, as if programmed, took still another tack. He pulled out a handkerchief and began to cry, deeply saddened by my ingratitude that wouldn’t allow him to make me the biggest movie star of all time.’

  Greg stood his ground, but Mayer still wasn’t ready to concede defeat. ‘His final ploy was to depict my refusal as an offense to motherhood, the American flag and family decency. Big fat tears continued to roll down his cheeks and fell off his chin.’ Then, seeing that Peck would not relent, he shooed him out the door.

  ‘My God, what a performance,’ Greg said to Hayward.

  The agent laughed. ‘He does that every day. He loves to cry.’

  Greg kept the memory of his encounter with Mayer vivid in his mind. It was a story he retold hundreds of times in the course of his long career. For him, it was a defining moment. Greg was shrewd enough to realize that the moguls were going to lose their grip on actors. But Greg also proved something vitally important to himself. In the teeth of Mayer’s formidable powers of persuasion, bullying and contemptuousness, he did not capitulate. Even though he was unsure of his abilities as an actor, he nonetheless summoned the courage not to sign on the dotted line. It was a signal both to Mayer and to himself that no matter what the future held, he was going to be his own man.

  Hayward was left to smooth things over with Mayer. ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Hayward, ‘one of the biggest feuds in years developed between me and Metro, particularly between myself and L B Mayer, because they weren’t able to sign Peck then and there.’ Time healed the breach, but it never became, in Hayward’s words ‘a passionate love affair.’

  Having resisted the snares of Mayer and the other studio bosses, Greg finally agreed to do a movie with top screenwriter Casey Robinson. Robinson endeared himself to Greg because he didn’t give him the usual sign-with-me-and-I’ll-make-you-a-star line. He told him that in his opinion he was a star. He offered him the principal role in Days of Glory to be produced by RKO studios, and a contract of $1,000 a week that didn’t tie him down to a seven year term. Said Greg, ‘I thought that was a hell of a lot of money.’ And it left Greg free of the bondage of the exclusive actor–producer arrangement.

  Described by film critic Richard Corliss as ‘the master of the art – or craft – of adaptation,’ Robinson scripted such memorable literary and theatrical adaptations as Captain Blood (1935), Four Daughters (1938), Dark Victory (1939), Now, Voyager (1941), and Kings Row (1942). Because he preferred to remain faithful to his source material, Robinson was much admired by the authors whose works he brought to the screen.

  So, in late summer of 1943, Greg and Greta made the move to sunny California. First they camped in the Monterey Motor Court off Sunset Boulevard because wartime made housing scarce. Then they rented a pink house high up in the Hollywood Hills.

  In Days of Glory (1944), Robinson cast Peck as the leader of a band of Russian guerillas fighting the Nazis in the Second World War. His leading lady was Robinson’s fiancée Tamara Toumanova. She was an internationally acclaimed ballet star who, legend had it, was born on a Russian train heading for Paris. At the time, her parents were fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution. Although she had performed with a number of highly regarded troupes including Balanchine’s Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, Toumanova also wanted a crack at a movie career.

  Though a beauty, she came across as a shade fulsome in the department of facial expressions, accustomed as she was to projecting a balletic character across the footlights. Still, speaking in the tones of her native Russia, she at least sounded Slavic. Greg opened his mouth and out popped his deep, resonant and quintessentially American accent. The effect was deeply jarring.

  In an effort to get Greg to sound proletarian and not over project, director Jacques Tourneur urged him to ‘Common it up. Project. Common it up.’ The microphone was only 2 feet over the actor’s nose and it was doing all the projecting he needed.

  For Greg, the learning process was excruciating. Theatrical and screen acting differed considerably. ‘The camera can read your thoughts,’ explained Greg. ‘You cannot get away with vocal prowess. You have to almost, somehow, become the role and think what the character thinks and feel the emotions he truly would feel in a set of given circumstances.’

  Despite his best effort, Greg’s stony composure rendered his character’s defending of Mother Russia dubious. To compound the problem, his laconic style and gloomy mien were comically at odds with his Resistance character’s ardent words. ‘Nina Nichova, where do you come from? Your eyes are so wonderful as a forgotten dream.’

  One afternoon, Greg was standing on the RKO sound stage, when a tall, thin, elegant woman with cold blue eyes and a ridiculous hat approached him. She looked him over from head to withers and exclaimed in a brisk staccato voice: ‘Golly! How I wish I owned a piece of you!’

  It was Hedda Hopper, top gossip columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Undoubtedly she had heard about the studios’ keen interest in him and she wanted to scoop her rival, Louella Parsons. These two middle-aged harpies had the power to make or break careers. Studio chiefs and stars alike feared their bitchy pens and sharp tongues. Refusing to give one of these journalists the lowdown on a romance, marriage, divorce or impending birth meant banishment from her column or – worse – vindictive, poisonous reprisals. (Hopper’s Beverly Hills mansion was known as ‘the house that fear built.’) Stars engaged in heated debates about which gossip columnist was the most dangerous. Ray Milland cast his ballot for Hopper. Calling her ‘an unmitigated bitch,’ he maintained, ‘She was venomous, vicious, a pathological liar, and quite stupid.’

  Over the years only a handful of celebrities – Garbo, Hepburn, Brando – consistently refused to cooperate with these two women. And a very few struck back. One was Joan Bennett, who starred opposite Greg in The Macomber Affair, released in 1947. She recalled, ‘Hedda Hopper had been taking pot shots at me in her column for years. I finally got fed up and I had a skunk shipped to her house. Later, she wrote that she christened it Joan. A columnist always got the last word.’

  At this point in time, Greg wasn’t unduly concerned with Hedda Hopper – or any other columnist for that matter. He wasn’t sure if Hollywood was just a quick phase in his life. And the release of Days of Glory didn’t reassure him. It failed to make a thorough run of even the second-string houses. With his perfectionism, Greg beat up on himself more than the most virulent critic; in fact, he was all for dropping the movie business then and there and ‘crawling back penitently’ to Broadway and the theater. But his pride wouldn’t let him. Neither would Greta. She had found her home.

  In the meanti
me, Darryl Zanuck, the short, cocky, arrogant and ruthless founder of Twentieth Century Fox, was in desperate need of Greg. In 1943, after testing 40 actors including Spencer Tracy and Franchot Tone and even considering Gene Kelly, he was still casting about for someone to play the lead role in The Keys of the Kingdom, the story of a Catholic missionary priest living in China. The character of Father Chisholm ranges in appearance from age 18 to 82. With his surefire instinct for what moviegoers wanted, Zanuck knew Greg would be right for the role.

  This time, Greg’s visage, voice and frame fit the role perfectly. So did his background. As a lonely boy in his early teens studying at an austere Catholic boarding school, he once dreamed of becoming a priest. And although he played a celibate, his gifts as a heartthrob showed through. Director John M Stahl was forced to close the set because chorus girls from a musical picture nearby spent so much time watching Greg, it was decided they were ‘adding more body than soul’ to The Kingdom.

  Critical praise ran high. The New York World Telegram said: ‘There have been intimations of his forceful talents on the stage and screen. Nevertheless there is astonishment awaiting everyone who sees The Keys of the Kingdom, with this fledging actor tossing in one of the soundest and most intelligently presented performances of the year . . .’ Greg lapped up the praise, but it was the shrewd analysis of Leland Hayward that stuck in his mind. His agent said candidly: ‘I think you were wonderful in the film, but I don’t think you’ll ever develop the facility to play just anything. You will always have to have the right material or you will sink like a stone.’

  With The Keys of the Kingdom, Greg received his first Academy Award nomination. It won him a $25,000 bonus from the Fox studio – and it catapulted him to fame. Suddenly, people previously regarded as sane were scrambling and snarling and begging for a part of him. It was a 1944 Klondike gold rush. Lauded Louella Parsons: ‘You couldn’t go to a party without hearing the buzz about this wonder man’s rugged handsomeness, his thin height, his magical speaking voice.’