Peck Gregory - Gregory Peck: A Charmed Life

Success so big and so speedy never happened to anybody anywhere, not even in Hollywood, not even to Garbo and Gable.

Colliers Magazine, December 1945

Who the hell is Gregory Peck? Leland Hayward barked into the telephone. The hottest talent agent in Hollywood was pressing his New York office for a quick rundown on a rising Broadway actor. The year was 1942 and talent scouts had been circling the young man.

Hayward could see the name Gregory Peck listed in his companys roster of 150 performers and writers, but who the devil was he? He needed an answer fast. Ordinarily, Hayward was too busy making million-dollar deals for his high-flying clients, such as Henry Fonda, Greta Garbo, Judy Garland and Fred Astaire, to bother about newcomers. But in the case of Peck, he was making an exception. An excitement was building about the actor. In fact, at that moment, Sam Goldwyn was holding on another of Haywards phone lines. The movie titan wanted to sign Peck to a seven year contract. Leland decided to wing it until he got all the facts.

Im willing to go to $1,000 a week, Goldwyn offered.

Make it $3,000, Hayward blithely retorted.

Both men excelled at the art of bluffing, but Hayward had the edge. Known far and wide as The Toscanini of the Telephone, he cajoled, charmed and manipulated whoever happened to be on the other end of the conversation. His daughter Brooke Hayward reminisced in Haywire, a memoir of her magical but doomed family: He was happiest when he was conducting business on his office sofa with three or four telephones at hand, his head deep in a cushion at one end and his feet comfortably crossed at the other.

Samuel Goldwyn (originally Schmuel Gelbfisz his name meant Goldfish but when he merged with the Selwyn Brothers to create the Goldwyn studio, he kept the name for himself) was Hollywoods major independent producer. Besides earning fame as a filmmaker, he was known for his memorable sayings: Its more than magnificent, its mediocre; Youve got to take the bull by the teeth; and God makes stars. Its up to the producers to find them.

When Hayward heard back from New York about Peck, he became even more curious. The actor was described as 27 years old, almost 6 foot 3 inches, 170 pounds and darkly handsome. His gaunt physique and bushy eyebrows suggested a young Abe Lincoln only sexier. And what a voice! Deep, resonant and compelling, it could reach all the way to the back row of the orchestra and the rear row of the balcony. Talent? Nothing earth-shattering. Still, he was clearly intelligent and ambitious. Plus, he possessed charisma that elusive star quality.

Then came the choicest morsel of all. Gregory Peck had a bad sacroiliac. The actor was 4-F a term for unfit for combat which disqualified him from military service.

Now there was bait Hayward could dangle in front of the studio bosses. With the Second World War raging, the moguls were in a tight squeeze. The best of Hollywoods male stars were heeding the call to fight. Clark Gable, Tyrone Power, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, Robert Montgomery, Robert Taylor and Douglas Fairbanks Jr were all climbing into uniforms. So the studio heads were desperate to find any reasonable-looking young man with a decent profile who knew a thing or two about acting.

Scour the provinces! The producers exhorted their talent scouts. Haunt summer stock companies. Suffer through high school plays. Above all, lay siege to Broadway. Take a seat up front. If a performer shows promise, then inquire about his draft status. If he happens to be 4-F, throw a net over him and haul him back alive. Or at least get the name of his agent.

To find out more about the promising Mr Peck, Leland Hayward telephoned the actor directly. The studios want to get a look at you, he rasped, in a voice filled with intensity. So come on out. Ill front you the money for the trip.

Greg didnt jump at the offer. For one thing he was a ruminator, given to chewing over decisions. Also, he was shy. The prospect of parading himself in front of the power princes of Hollywood made him extremely nervous. But there was more to it. To get a clearer idea of his state of mind at this point in time, lets take a brief look back at where he came from and where he thought he was going.

To begin with, Greg wasnt born to the limelight. In fact he sort of stumbled into acting. He started out in La Jolla, California, an exquisite seaside community on the outskirts of San Diego. While today La Jolla is known as an affluent town populated by entrepreneurs, scientists and retirees, back then it was unsophisticated, slightly bohemian and quite remote. The feel of the place was much like Macomb, Alabama, which was the fictional hometown of his signature character, Atticus Finch, in To Kill aMockingbird (1962).

In La Jolla, the rich knew the poor, the young knew the old and everybody knew everybody elses business. Springing as Greg did from what used to be called a broken home, he emerged emotionally battered, but also freed from the constraints of hovering parents. He learned early to fend for himself. But his horizons were woefully limited. For a while he thought hed like to be a truck driver. In fact, he showed a real knack for careening a red Union oilrig about town. Then as would happen many times in his remarkable life a woman gave him a push at just the right time. In this case, his girlfriend Betty Clardy urged him to knuckle down and study. So he traveled up north to Berkeley and majored in English. There, he caught the acting bug. Gripped by the fever, he finished his last exam and hightailed it for New York.

Luck is a word Greg often used in describing what happened next. He liked to portray himself as fortunes darling. Perhaps it was his way of making up for the embarrassments and economic setbacks he weathered growing up. Or maybe he wanted to propitiate the gods. In any case, when he came East, he not only was lucky but he showed a talent for creating luck, plunking himself down in auspicious circumstances.

In this respect, he was not alone. As New Yorker writer E B White noted in an essay about the city:

The residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.