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Gregory Peck

Eldred Gregory Peck (April 5, 1916 – June 12, 2003) was an American actor and one of the most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1970s. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Peck the 12th-greatest male star of Classic Hollywood Cinema.

Gregory Peck

Eldred Gregory Peck

(1916-04-05)April 5, 1916

June 12, 2003(2003-06-12) (aged 87)

Los Angeles, California, U.S.

Actor

1941–2000

Greta Kukkonen
(m. 1942; div. 1955)
(m. 1955)

5, including Cecilia Peck

Ethan Peck (grandson)

After studying at the Neighborhood Playhouse with Sanford Meisner, Peck began appearing in stage productions, acting in over 50 plays and three Broadway productions. He first gained critical success in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), a John M. Stahl–directed drama that earned him his first Academy Award nomination. He starred in a series of successful films, including romantic-drama The Valley of Decision (1944), Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945), and family film The Yearling (1946). He encountered lukewarm commercial reviews at the end of the 1940s, his performances including The Paradine Case (1947) and The Great Sinner (1948). Peck reached global recognition in the 1950s and 1960s, appearing back-to-back in the book-to-film adaptation of Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) and biblical drama David and Bathsheba (1951). He starred alongside Ava Gardner in The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) and Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday (1953).


Other notable films in which he appeared include Moby Dick (1956, and its 1998 mini-series), The Guns of Navarone (1961), Cape Fear (1962, and its 1991 remake), The Omen (1976), and The Boys from Brazil (1978). Throughout his career, he often portrayed protagonists with "fiber" within a moral setting.[1] Gentleman's Agreement (1947) centered on topics of antisemitism, while Peck's character in Twelve O'Clock High (1949) dealt with the challenges of military leadership and post-traumatic stress disorder during World War II. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), an adaptation of the modern classic of the same name which revolved around racial inequality, for which he received universal acclaim. In 1983, he starred opposite Christopher Plummer in The Scarlet and The Black as Hugh O'Flaherty, a Catholic priest who saved thousands of escaped Allied POWs and Jewish people in Rome during the Second World War.


Peck was also active in politics, challenging the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 and was regarded as a political opponent by President Richard Nixon. President Lyndon B. Johnson honored Peck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 for his lifetime humanitarian efforts. Peck died in his sleep from bronchopneumonia at the age of 87.

Archives[edit]

Peck donated his personal collection of home movies and prints of his feature films to the Film Archive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1999. The film material at the Academy Film Archive is complemented by printed materials in the Gregory Peck papers at the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library.[364]

List of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients

Fishgall, Gary (2002), , New York: Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-684-85290-X

Gregory Peck: A Biography

(1980), Gregory Peck: A Biography, New York: W. Morrow, ISBN 0-688-03619-8

Freedland, Michael

(2005), Gregory Peck: A Charmed Life, New York: Da Capo Press, ISBN 1-861-05824-1

Haney, Lynn

McGilligan, Patrick (2004), Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light, New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

Archived June 4, 2021, at the Wayback Machine – The Gregory Peck Foundation

Gregory Peck Official Website

at the Internet Broadway Database

Gregory Peck

at IMDb

Gregory Peck

at the TCM Movie Database

Gregory Peck

Daily Telegraph obituary

Gregory Peck

Gregory Peck in the Archived July 29, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, 1930 US Census Archived July 29, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, and the Social Security Death Index Archived July 29, 2013, at the Wayback Machine.

1920 US Census

Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Gregory Peck papers

interview on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs, August 8, 1980

Gregory Peck

Archived August 6, 2021, at the Wayback Machine Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive (Collection 1429). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

Image of Sidney Poitier holding his Oscar alongside Gregory Peck, Annabella and Anne Bancroft backstage at the Academy Awards, Los Angeles, 1964.