Gregory Peck Talking Pictures

With his chiselled good looks, that distinctive voice

and an air of strength and integrity,

Gregory Peck was born to be a leading man.

Throughout the 1940s and '50s,

he was one of the movie world's biggest stars.

A co-star once said of Peck,

"When there's 100 people in a room or in a scene, you look at him.

"But it's more than so-called star quality.

"There's a quiet power in his being that is almost awesome."

Peck was nominated for five Oscars

and would win in 1962 for the landmark role of Atticus Finch

in the film of Harper Lee's novel To Kill A Mockingbird.

In 1986, to mark his 70th birthday,

Peck appeared in a programme called A Portrait In Films,

which began with him talking about how he got started.

Peck showed little interest in performing on the stage

until he went as a medical student to the University of California.

A man came and said, "I'm the director of the little theatre,

"and I need a tall actor. And I've seen you on the campus

"and I wonder if you'd come and have a try."

And I don't know why I did, I just said, "Well, why not?"

And I don't know what led me.

If I'd said "No," or "I don't see the point of it,"

my life would be entirely different.

I went to New York and I went to dramatic school,

I went through the usual months and years of being hungry at times

and living in rented rooms.

But eventually I began to work in the theatre. Eventually onto Broadway.

My Broadway debut, if I can call it that,

was with the wonderful Gladys Cooper,

a play by Emlyn Williams called The Morning Star.

One thing led to another

and eventually I came out to do films and I fell in love with filmmaking.

'Here is the true story, which could have happened in any land,

'of a little group of free people who lived and loved and fought

'to drive the invaders from their native soil.'

'One of the countless thousands of those guerrilla bands, who,

'from secret hiding places in the swamps and the great forests,

'lived days of imperishable glory.'

'Their leader had been left behind by the army especially

'to organise them.

'Vladimir, as played by Mr Gregory Peck,

'distinguished star of the New York stage.'

My first film director, whose name was Jacques Tourneur,

kept saying to me,

"Greg, could you just common up your speech a little bit?

"Just, you know, not so many consonants.

"Let me not hear all those Ts and Ps, and just common it up

"a little bit, because you sound like a stage actor."

Lie! You came five days ago! How many of you?

-Funftausend.

-5,000.

-Lie! 2,000. How many tanks?

-Wie viele tanks?

-Zweihundert.

-200.

-75! Lies, every word! Finish him off.

-It's my right, step to one side.

Don't waste your ammunition, this is much simpler!

'Almost immediately as a result of that first film,'

you became hot property with various major studios bidding for you,

including, I believe, Louis B. Mayer.

He did say to me that he could take me and mould me

and I could shine in the firmament of his stars with Clark Gable

and Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo,

if I would only sign a seven year exclusive pact with him.

And when I said,

"With all the respect in the world, Mr Mayer, I cannot do that.

"I want to go back to the theatre. My ambition is not to be a movie star.

"I hope you will ask me to make some films,

but I cannot sign a seven year exclusive contract."

Well, with that, much to my amazement,

enormous tears formed in his eyes.

He became red in the face and the tears rolled down his cheeks

and dribbled off the end of his chin.

Then he began to pace up and down and go into a harangue

about what a terrible mistake I was making,

and he felt personally,

deeply wounded that I would not allow him to manage my life.

Well, I stuck to my guns, I suppose, and when we walked out,

my agent and I, whose name was Leland Hayward,

I said to him, "Well, that was a performance."

He said, "Oh, he does that every day."

Another movie mogul now interested in the rising star

was David O Selznick, who hadn't liked him after a screen test

four years before, even though he did photograph like Abraham Lincoln.

In 1945, Selznick changed his mind and cast him

opposite Ingrid Bergman in Hitchcock's Spellbound.

I know why you came in.

Why?

Because something's happened to us.

But it doesn't happen like that...

in a day.

It happens in a moment sometimes.

I felt it this afternoon.

It was like lightning striking.

It strikes rarely.

In those days, Ingrid Bergman was the centre of things,

and I think it was part of my agent's master plan to put me in

opposite several outstanding ladies of that day.

Greer Garson and Ingrid herself.

I don't understand how it happened.

He had the theory that people might come to see those beautiful ladies

on the screen, but they could hardly escape seeing me there too!

Perhaps it was a good theory.

I think it fits in with a quote that I've always been fond of.

It was a quote from Carole Lombard,

who always said it takes ten pictures to make a star,

so that the audience accepts you over a period of time,

they become accustomed to seeing you on the screen.

And if they like you a little bit,

they're looking forward to the next picture.

By now, Peck was an established star,

ready to compete with older actors who were returning from the war,

with an Oscar nomination for the Keys Of The Kingdom.

Another of Peck's most popular films was William Wyler's Roman Holiday,

shot entirely on location in Rome

and co-starring newcomer Audrey Hepburn.

How did he respond to the fresh challenge

of playing romantic comedy?

Oh, I seized it with great enthusiasm, because I had done

a good deal of comedy in the theatre, even some farce,

so I jumped at the opportunity to play Roman Holiday.

And I must say, aside from one television show,

that I did with Jack Benny, where I played comedy sketches

and sang and danced with Jack and George Burns,

the most fun that I've ever had working was in Roman Holiday.

Do you know my favourite poem?

You already recited that for me.

"I refuse a rose from a couch of snows

"in the Acroceraunian Mountains..."

-Keats.

-Shelley.

-Keats!

-You just keep your mind off poetry and on the pyjamas

and everything will be all right.

-It's Keats.

-It's Shelley. I'll be back in about ten minutes.

Keats.

You have my permission to withdraw.

When we did the Mouth Of Truth scene, which is that monument in Rome,

and the legend is if you dare to put your hand in the Mouth Of Truth,

if you've lied, it'll bite your hand off.

Well, we had that little scene to do

and I remembered an old bit that Red Skelton used to do.

When he'd shake hands with somebody, he'd come like that.

Well, I said on the side to Willie Wyler,

"Supposing I spring that on Audrey

"when I put my hand in the Mouth Of Truth.

"Is it too corny? Is it too awful?" He said, "Oh, no. Do it.

"Let's see her reaction. But don't tell her you're going to do it."

So when I put my hand in there and brought it out,

well, Audrey just screamed and went bonkers.

And it was a wonderful, spontaneous moment.

THEY SCREAM

SHE SCREAMS

-Hello!

-You beast!

'That was only one take.'

-It was just a joke.

-It never hurt your hand! You were bluffing!

'About two weeks after we began, I called my agent in Hollywood,'

and the contract had been drawn up as "Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday,

"and introducing Audrey Hepburn."

And I called him and I said, "This cannot be.

"This is going to be ridiculous.

"This girl is going to win the Academy Award in her first role.

"And her name must be up above the title with mine."

'And this is not just simple altruism and generosity on my part,

'it would look foolish any other way.

'And she just hit the screen like a bomb.'

It does seem from the film as if everyone is having a terrific time in Rome.

Although I gather William Wyler is quite a taskmaster as a director.

Yes, he is, but that's good, because you know that he wants the best.

If he's hard on you, if he insists on doing it over and over again,

it's simply because he wants you at your best

and he wants the scene to be as good as it can possibly be.

I always looked on it as a chance to do a little bit better

and to search for something new,

something that would strike him as being

exactly right, and it wouldn't have bothered me if he'd done 127 takes.

Would you have liked to have done more comedy,

-more romantic comedy?

-I would.

I always felt every time someone sent me

a comedy script, that Cary Grant had seen it first and had turned it down.

'Around this town,

'he had pretty much a monopoly on light romantic comedies.'

# We're in love with a wonderful town! #

One of Peck's finest dramatic roles,

which at last gained him the Oscar as Best Actor,

is as the lawyer Atticus Finch

in To Kill A Mockingbird, based on the novel by Harper Lee.

It's a role he was almost born to play liberal, dependable,

righteous, with a touch of Abraham Lincoln about the character.

And it was offered to him at the peak of his career.

It was a true, middle-class, American small-town story,

and those were my beginnings.

On top of that, I was very much in sympathy with the lawyer

who risked his personal reputation, his law practice,

and even his personal safety and that of his children

in defending a negro accused of rape in the South in the year 1931.

I just seemed to fit right into the part without having to work

too hard at it, and the emotions were there all the time.

We had that wave of emotion that went from start to finish.

'At Santa Monica, the Academy Awards presentation.

'Sophia Loren happily presents Gregory Peck with his...'

I remember hearing my name called out for the Oscar and, in a daze,

walking up the aisle,

and I had in my hand a gold watch that Harper Lee, the author,

had given me, which her father had carried in the courtroom

for 35 years, and she'd given it to me.

And then up on the stage was none other than Sophia Loren!

With a hug and a kiss and a gold statue. So that was a nice moment.

I believe you almost missed the Oscar ceremony,

and all because of a horse called Owen's Sedge.

'The press had it that I might be the owner of

'a winning Grand National horse on a Saturday,

'and be back in Hollywood and win the Oscar on a Monday.

'That, of course, was a wonderful pipe dream.

'I wasn't actually trying to do that.

'Owen's Sedge ran a respectable seventh

'and came cantering in very nicely,

'and then we flew back and the Oscar ceremony was the following Monday.'

During the mid-1960s,

Peck took time out from acting to involve himself in government

sponsorship of the arts, the presidency of the Film Academy

and charity work, for which he was awarded a special Oscar in 1968

and honoured with a presidential medal from Lyndon Johnson.

His reputation as a campaigner for liberal causes had become

inseparable from his film work,

as he discovered when a journalist put the question to him

at a press conference in the Third World.

"From what we hear about you, you are what they call in America a liberal.

"You come out for civil rights legislation for the blacks.

"You come out against anti-Semites." I said, "Yes, yes.

"I suppose that's true."

"All right, he said, how do you account for your appearance

"in these racist Western films that you've made?"

And for just a moment I drew an absolute blank,

and I looked at the faces around me - they were all people of colour.

And I realised that they saw the Red Indian as a person to whom

they could relate and they saw the white man pushing them aside,

'devastating their land, putting them in reservations.

'And it's true,

'we did that.

'Well, I was certainly hung up for an answer.'

I think an angel touched me on the shoulder,

because I said to him, "I will never shoot another Indian any more!"

THEY CHUCKLE

Three years after that programme,

Peck made a rare chat show appearance here in the UK

on the Wogan Show, and it was that Oscar-winning role

in To Kill A Mockingbird that opened the conversation.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

BAND PLAYS "THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN" THEME

-It's good to see you, welcome.

-Thank you.

Is that your favourite film, To Kill A Mockingbird?

Just about.

It probably was closer to the real me than almost any other film.

My childhood was small-town and my dad was not the town lawyer,

but he was the town druggist

and our life was not too different from what was seen in the movie.

I... I have a wonderful recollection of the first day of filming.

The author, as you know, is a lady, Harper Lee.

And she was there for the first day of filming,

and the scene was that I came home from the courthouse,

or my law office, with my briefcase

and my two children I was a widower -

ran down to the end of the street and the boy took the...

And we strolled down the street talking over the day's news,

the camera tracking alongside of us.

And as we were in the middle of the scene with the dialogue

and all, out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of Harper Lee

behind the camera, and I thought I saw tears glistening on her cheeks.

So when we finished it the director said, "Well, I think we've got it,

"no use doing that again."

So we felt a bit pumped up about that.

We'd done, we thought, a very touching and moving scene.

And I walked over to Harper Lee and I said, "Harper, I thought

"I saw you out of the corner... and I thought there were tears.

"What went wrong? What's wrong?"

And she said, "Oh, Gregory,

"you've got a little pot belly just like my daddy."

LAUGHTER

And...

The highest praise. The best review I ever got.

But the part of Atticus Finch,

a compassionate, quietly brave and noble soul,

is that how you see yourself?

Compassionately...brave, quiet and noble... No, not at all!

No.

-No.

-How do you see yourself?

A very lucky fellow who got into, somehow, a profession that

he loved and just kept working away at it for good Lord! -

about 45 years now

and have enjoyed every film, and still have enormous enthusiasm

and still have rosy dreams

about making the perfect movie one day.

And so I think one is very lucky to get into a job like that,

that one loves doing, and it's been going on quite a long time now.

-Did you grow up with acting ambitions?

-Oh, not at all, no.

-How did you start?

-Well... I graduated from college and I went...

I was... I was...

I fell in love with the thing, the theatre, when I was in college,

and I thought, "Well, I'll go to New York and see what I can do.

"I'll give it a try for a few years."

So I went to drama school and, at the end of two years,

they had what they called a demonstration play,

and agents and talent scouts came to have a look and see us do our stuff.

And then it was the custom for the students to go back to

the school the next morning and wait for the phone calls,

that sometimes came, sometimes didn't.

There was a call and the receptionist put her hand over the phone

and she looked at me and said, "It's for you."

And it was a famous producer named Guthrie McClintic,

interested to see me about a small role in a play

called A Doctor's Dilemma, by Shaw.

Well, I didn't wait for the end of the sentence. I took off.

I knew exactly where his office was, it was six blocks away.

And for your viewers who don't know Manhattan geography,

I dashed across 46th Street, four blocks up Sixth Avenue,

to the building where Guthrie McClintic's office was,

into the elevator, up to the eighth floor,

skidded down the hall into his office.

He's still talking on the phone to the receptionist!

LAUGHTER

And he just... He stared at me and there I was, the fellow that he...

And he began to laugh and then that segued into a cough

and he went into a kind of a fit and slid off of the seat laughing,

coughing, and he said, "You've got the job!"

LAUGHTER

So that was the beginning.

It had nothing to do with anything,

except that I was a pretty fast runner in those days

LAUGHTER

But you seemed to make a lot of very successful movies

almost from day one.

Do you remember your first movie? What was your first movie?

-Well, I... Well, I don't think about it much.

-I see.

It was called Days Of Glory, but let's go on...

We'll skip on over that!

-The first one you were quite proud of?

-The Keys Of The Kingdom...

Of course.

..was a huge success, my second role.

And from really being broke in New York

and wandering around producers' offices

leaving my biography and my eight-by-ten stills...

If I may say so, it's very hard to picture Gregory Peck

hawking his wares around New York.

I mean, one imagines you were a star from day one that they said,

"It's him! Let's have him! Put him in the movies!"

-It didn't quite happen that way.

-Didn't it?

-No.

No, it took a few years of doing all that auditioning

and knocking on doors and begging

until finally I did get started,

and that was due to the fact that I could run six blocks in two minutes.

LAUGHTER

Can you still move quite speedily? Are you nippy on the pins?

Well, I'm not quite as nimble as I used to be. I move well, but slowly.

LAUGHTER

With a certain grace.

We try.

LAUGHTER

I've worked with some lovely girls, with Ava Gardner...

-You have, haven't you?

-..and Ingrid Bergman...

and Jennifer Jones, Angie Dickinson, Lee Remick

and probably a few others I can't think of at the moment,

but they are all quite marvellous

and Jane is certainly in that group of top, top film actresses.

You wouldn't pick out one that you really...

stimulated you above the others?

Fine performances...

-Oh, that's the way we're going!

-No, no!

LAUGHTER

There isn't a hint...

Please! There isn't a hint of smut about that question.

I just felt...

Did you...? Which one inspired you to your best acting performance?

Ah.

LAUGHTER

Well...

I have to say, they all did. But I would like to say...

that there is a lady in London with whom I made three pictures,

and I've loved her for a good many years,

and in a way we're kind of what we call down South kissin' cousins.

I mean to say, we're both small-town folks to start with,

and I love her dearly, and she may be listening tonight.

And it's Ava Gardner.

Yes, she lives in London.

I'm sure she'll be delighted with the tribute.

Well, I'll see her soon and I'll find out whether she was or not.

LAUGHTER

We've had on this very programme various tributes to you.

Sophia Loren said that no man could consider himself handsome

unless he had your nose.

-She said that?

-She did.

LAUGHTER

OK.

LAUGHTER

Well, that's OK... Let's...

It's very nice.

Your voice has always been one of your great professional assets,

I think.

You've got the voice to go with the stature.

No, I...

I had nothing to do with it!

It was just there. Something to do with the adenoids, I think.

Er...one time I was in the film studio in Rome, Cinecitta,

and I was walking down a corridor in the sound department

and I heard my voice coming from behind closed doors,

and so I opened and peeked in, and there was an Italian actor

who was standing before the screen and recording...

I was on screen in the film and he was recording my lines in Italian.

So I stepped in and I met him and we shook hands and embraced.

And he took an intense interest in the state of my health.

He said, "Are you well, Mr Peck?" I said, "Yes, as far as I know."

A little later he said, "Are you quite well?

"Do you exercise, do you feel quite fit?" I said, "Yes, I think so."

Then he said again, "Are you really well?" And I said, "Yes!

"I'm really well! Why are you so interested in my health?"

He said, "I have dubbed your voice in 27 movies

"and I've raised five children doing it.

"And I want you to stay in very good health

"and make another 27 films."

LAUGHTER

And we've remained the best of friends.

As far as I know, he's still doing it.

You've made some pictures here,

and I know you've a lot of friends here, and over the years

people like David Niven and Cary Grant were great friends of yours.

Yes, yes. I remember them with great, great affection.

You know, Niven was really one of the most entertaining men who ever lived.

And I will never forget being at the Oscar show

and David was on and I was in the wings ready to hand the statue

to somebody, and this is the famous show

when suddenly a streaker somehow got into the theatre

and dashed all the way across the stage behind David.

And the crowd began to laugh and David just looked, like that

and, without any hesitation, he said,

"There's a man who's not concerned with his own shortcomings!"

LAUGHTER

I... I thought, really, it's the best ad lib that I've ever seen.

And of course Jack Hawkins was a dear friend of mine and Laurence Olivier.

I met him when I was quite young.

He was already the greatest actor in the world when I met...

Sir Laurence and Vivien Leigh and I was a bit intimidated.

I'm not intimidated much by anybody,

but I had such respect and reverence for this man,

all that he'd done, in the theatre and in film, I was a bit shy.

I didn't have much to say to him. But then, years later,

we worked together in The Boys From Brazil and I found out

he's one of the warmest, easiest men to be with and we became good pals.

We had a desperate fight in The Boys From Brazil with a pack of mad dogs

and it was all choreographed and we did four gouges

and one kick and one punch. And the director would say, "Cut!"

And we'd lie on the floor giggling like schoolboys in between.

And then we do another gouge and another punch and another kick,

with the mad dogs rushing around. Of course, the dogs, it's all pretence.

The dogs are really pussycats in disguise.

What they do when they leap at you

is they are following the trainer's orders.

They are good professional dogs. They are retrieving something.

The trainer might say just before the take, "Fetch! Fetch!"

And he looks at the dog and the dog sort of goes like that.

LAUGHTER

They turn the camera, the dog and runs at you

and he fetches your lapel, or he tries to,

and later they put in the barking and snarling and growling.

And they have some contraption to lift their lips

and make their fangs show.

-Thank heavens!

-Yes, I was glad of that too.

The American Film Institute

made a presentation of a Life Achievement Award.

The Life Achievement Award has, if you think about it,

a slightly ominous ring to it!

LAUGHTER

And I remember I got up there and I said...

You know, James Mason was a friend of mine and I said...

James was not a man with a lot of jokes,

but he had one joke that he liked to tell.

It had to do with his filming in Dublin,

going out one evening for a walk and window-shopping.

And he had a trench coat and hat. Didn't think he'd be recognised.

And a little lady trailed along behind him,

finally worked up the nerve and she tapped him on the shoulder

and she said, "Begging your pardon, sir,

"but wouldn't you be James Mason in his later years?"

LAUGHTER

And I like... I like that good Irish phrase "later years."

I like it because it's candid and it's dispassionate, but it's

comfortable, because it leaves the possibility of more to come.

There was more to come.

Peck continued acting and winning awards rights through the 1990s.

He died in 2003 aged 87,

just weeks after the American Film Institute

had named Atticus Finch as the greatest film hero of all time.

On hearing of his death, Harper Lee said,

"Gregory Peck was a beautiful man.

"Atticus Finch gave him the opportunity to play himself."

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd