The Full Biography
Gregory Peck. Actor. The La Jolla kid who made moral weather look like a leading man’s job, then spent the decades after being the town’s idea of a conscience without becoming a statue too early.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is Atticus Finch on a porch, a pair of glasses, a voice that treats a jury as a congregation. 1962. What the still cannot show is Eldred Gregory Peck of La Jolla, California, a pre-med student who switched, a man who had already been a star for fifteen years before the porch, and a life of unpaid rooms, a second marriage that held, and a death in 2003 that the porch has never accepted.
He was born on April 5, 1916, in La Jolla, then a small town on the San Diego coast. His father, Gregory Pearl Peck, was a pharmacist. His mother, Bernice Mae Ayres, was a Missourian. The marriage broke when he was young. He spent stretches with his maternal grandmother and at a Catholic military academy in Los Angeles. The given name Eldred was a grandmother’s idea; he dropped it as soon as a stage would let him. He went to San Diego State, then to Berkeley, first as a pre-med student and then as an English major who had found the little theater. A back injury — a dancing class, a slipped disc — kept him out of the war that took his generation. The rumor that he had dodged the draft followed him for years. The file is a medical excuse and a man who spent the rest of his life looking like the soldier he had not been allowed to be.
New York was the door. The Neighborhood Playhouse. Sanford Meisner. Broadway in the early 1940s: The Morning Star, The Willow and I, a revival of The Skin of Our Teeth. Hollywood found a face that photographed as decency and a height that photographed as a pillar. Days of Glory (1944) was the debut, a war picture opposite Tamara Toumanova. The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), as a Catholic missionary in China, brought the first Oscar nomination. He was twenty-eight. The town had hired a conscience before it had hired a movie star, and then it discovered it had both.
What came next was not a lucky streak. It was a run. Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945) with Ingrid Bergman, a psychiatrist picture that asked him to be a patient with a missing name. The Yearling (1946), a Florida father, a second nomination. Duel in the Sun (1946), a rare turn as a bad man for David O. Selznick. Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), for Elia Kazan, from Laura Z. Hobson’s novel: a journalist who pretends to be Jewish to write about antisemitism. The picture won Best Picture. He was nominated again. It is the first civic object, and the town still underfiles it because the porch ate the file. Twelve O’Clock High (1949), a bomber-group commander cracking, a fourth nomination, a performance of competence that is also a breakdown. The Gunfighter (1950), a western that treats a reputation as a trap. He was, for a stretch, the man the town sent when it wanted to feel adult.
Roman Holiday (1953), for William Wyler, opposite a newcomer named Audrey Hepburn, is the light in the run. He is a reporter who knows a runaway princess’s secret and, for once in a studio picture, does not spend the last reel cashing it in. He told the studio to put her name above the title. The gesture is famous because it was also accurate. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956). Moby Dick (1956), for John Huston, as Ahab — a stretch the notices divided and he stood by. The Big Country (1958), which he also produced. On the Beach (1959), Stanley Kramer’s nuclear-end picture. The Guns of Navarone (1961), a war adventure that paid. Cape Fear (1962), a lawyer stalked by Robert Mitchum, a picture that is the porch’s shadow. Pork Chop Hill (1959), a Korean War picture that asked for mud instead of a pillar. Beloved Infidel (1959), as F. Scott Fitzgerald, a misfire. Then Harper Lee’s book, Horton Foote’s script, Robert Mulligan’s camera. To Kill a Mockingbird opened at the end of 1962. Atticus Finch is the civic object. Best Actor, April 1963. He knew it. He did not spend the rest of the life pretending he had invented the century’s father. He played him and then had to live next to him. Lee said the man and the character were not unalike. He put, he said, everything he had learned in forty-six years about fathers and children into the part. The balcony standing as he leaves the courtroom is the still. The work underneath is a man who had already been a journalist, a bomber commander, and a reporter in Rome, using all of it.
He had married Greta Kukkonen, a Finnish-born makeup artist, in 1942. Three sons: Jonathan, Stephen, Carey. The marriage ended in 1955. That same year he married Veronique Passani, a French journalist who had interviewed him in Paris for France Soir and then did not go home. Two children: Anthony and Cecilia. The second household held until his death. In June 1975 Jonathan, the youngest of the first marriage, a television reporter in Santa Monica, died by suicide. He was thirty. Peck did not make a press tour of it. He went quieter. A complete life of a moral weather system has to hold a child’s death. The porch cannot cover it. The file should not skip it. Stephen became a Vietnam veteran and a writer; his memoir of the war and of the house is part of the file the fan sites skip. Carey went into California politics and ran for Congress. The sons of the first marriage had to share a father the country had already hired as a syllabus.
I put everything I had into it — all my feelings and everything I’d learned in 46 years of living, about family life and fathers and children.Gregory Peck, on Atticus Finch
The turn is the porch and then the son. A lot of moral weather systems become statues. He became a man who had already been hired as a conscience and decided to do some of the unpaid version. The humanitarian work is not a brand refresh. It is a job he took when the camera had had enough of the glasses.
Six things most people never knew
- Eldred is the given name. Gregory is the cut. La Jolla, a broken house, Berkeley first, a back that kept him out of the war.
- He was a star long before the porch. Four Oscar nominations in the 1940s. Gentleman’s Agreement is the first civic object.
- Atticus is 1962, fifteen years into the career. The myth treats it as the origin. The file treats it as a peak.
- Jonathan’s death in 1975 is the private plot. A son. A suicide. The porch does not get to erase it.
- Veronique is the marriage that lasted. 1955 to 2003. A French journalist. A household, not a still.
- He used the Atticus capital on unpaid rooms. Academy president, American Cancer Society, the Hersholt, the Medal of Freedom. The conscience was not only a lighting plot.
Cecilia, Anthony, Stephen, and Carey have had to share a father who is a syllabus. Friends from the working years describe a man who was drier than Atticus and more wounded than the pillar. The Peck who could laugh about the glasses could not always laugh about the job of being decent in public. Veronique kept the house. The children kept the name. The fandom is louder than the kitchen. He knew that. He went to the unpaid rooms anyway, and then he went home to Veronique, which is the marriage the porch does not get to claim as a lighting plot. The glasses stayed at the office. The house was a life.
The later years
The years after the porch were long on purpose. He took parts that were not always Atticus. Captain Newman, M.D. (1963), an Army psychiatrist picture. Behold a Pale Horse (1964), a Spanish exile. Mirage (1965). Arabesque (1966) with Sophia Loren, a light thriller. The Stalking Moon (1968). MacArthur (1977) asked him to be a general the country still argues about. The Omen (1976) is a joke the town still tells and also a picture that paid: a diplomat who adopts a child the devil has already claimed. It was one of the year’s biggest hits. He did not pretend it was Mockingbird. He cashed the check and kept the unpaid rooms. The Boys from Brazil (1978) put him opposite Laurence Olivier as a Nazi hunter, a stretch toward the man he had not played in Gentleman’s Agreement. The Sea Wolves (1980). The Scarlet and the Black (1983), a television film as Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, the Vatican priest who hid Jews and Allied prisoners from the Gestapo — a part that sits next to Atticus without being a rental. Old Gringo (1989) with Jane Fonda, Ambrose Bierce in Mexico. Other People’s Money (1991) opposite Danny DeVito, a last studio comedy of manners. He chose the pictures the way a careful man chooses a guest list. He did not vanish. He also did not pretend the climate of 1962 could be rented again.
The unpaid rooms are the chapter the stills skip. He served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1967 to 1970, a Democrat in a town that was still arguing about the blacklist’s leftovers, and he used the office to say the argument out loud. He was national chairman of the American Cancer Society in 1966. The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award came in 1968. The Presidential Medal of Freedom, from Lyndon Johnson, in 1969. He campaigned for Adlai Stevenson and for Lyndon Johnson and, in 1972, against a war he had not been allowed to fight. He narrated documentaries. He endowed a theater at his old university. The American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award arrived in 1989. In 2003, weeks before his death, the AFI named Atticus Finch the greatest movie hero of the twentieth century. He was already too sick to make a tour of the list.
Home was a house in Los Angeles that Veronique kept as a life, not a museum. He read. He sailed when the back allowed it. He showed up for the American Cancer Society and for the Motion Picture and Television Fund because those rooms had asked, and because a man who had been paid to look like decency had decided the unpaid version was the rest of the job. He narrated the Army’s The Big Picture and, years after, civil-rights and nuclear films the way a careful man narrates: the voice, not the speech. He endowed work at Berkeley. He kept a correspondence with Harper Lee. He was, in the last public appearances, slower, and still the porch. He died on June 12, 2003, at home, of bronchopneumonia. He was eighty-seven. Veronique was there. The children were there. The funeral at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels was a civic morning. Brock Peters, who had played Tom Robinson, spoke. The glasses stayed in the culture’s pocket.
He had already, by then, been the Academy’s president in the years when the blacklist’s leftovers were still a live argument, and he had used the podium. He had already endowed a chair and a theater and shown up for a cancer society that was not a premiere. The last public readings of Atticus, for benefits, were a man lending the syllabus without pretending the syllabus was the whole life. Friends from those rooms describe a professional who was drier than the porch and more exact about a cue. What the porch cannot hold is the count underneath: a broken house in La Jolla, a slipped disc, four nominations before the fifth won, a princess in Rome, a journalist who pretended to be Jewish, a son who did not stay, a French wife who did, and a set of unpaid rooms he took because the camera had already used the face. He had already, by 1962, written the public man. The forty years after the porch were the life he actually lived next to the syllabus.
After he was gone
Every decent lawyer on film still pays him a tax. Every “America’s dad” still steals the glasses. Gentleman’s Agreement still argues. Roman Holiday still teaches how little a star can do, and how much it counts. The son is in the biographies whether the fan sites print him or not. Veronique died in 2012. Cecilia has kept the name in public without turning it into a shop.
He came out of La Jolla, took the pillar job, made antisemitism a prestige plot, put on Atticus, buried a son, stayed married, and died as the century’s porch. If you only remember the glasses, you have the still. If you remember Eldred, Jonathan, and the unpaid rooms, you have him.
Portrait: Clarence Sinclair Bull · Public domain (PD US no notice) · via Wikimedia Commons