49 Fun Facts About Gregory Peck

In which Californian community was Gregory Peck born in 1916?

La Jolla did not hold him long: after his parents divorced he was passed between them and his grandmother, and at ten they sent him to a military academy in Los Angeles.

What was Gregory Peck's real first name, which he dropped before heading to New York?

Eldred was a name his mother picked out of a phone book, he said, and he never liked it. Nobody knew him in New York, so he simply switched to his middle name.

What sport did Peck take up at the University of California, Berkeley?

Rowing stayed with him for life: in 1996 he pledged $25,000 to the Cal men's crew in honour of his old coach, Ky Ebright.

Which dance legend's movement class gave Gregory Peck the back injury that kept him out of WWII?

Martha Graham taught movement at his New York drama school, and he hurt his back in her class. His studio blamed a college sports injury instead because, he said, a dance class 'wasn't macho enough'.

Under which legendary acting teacher did Peck study at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse?

Sanford Meisner taught him there on a scholarship, at a time when Peck was so broke that he sometimes slept in Central Park.

Peck earned his first Oscar nomination playing a missionary priest in China in which 1944 film?

The Keys of the Kingdom was only his second film. With so many leading men away at war, the newcomer's stock soared, and the nomination made him a star.

In which 1945 Hitchcock film did Peck play an amnesiac who may be a murderer?

Spellbound is the Hitchcock thriller whose famous dream sequence was designed by the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí.

In which 1946 Western, nicknamed 'Lust in the Dust', was Peck cast as a cruel cowboy?

Duel in the Sun first had John Wayne lined up as the wicked Lewt, but producer David O. Selznick wanted a sex story and felt Wayne stood for the exact opposite.

In The Yearling (1946), Peck plays a Florida father whose son insists on raising what?

A fawn, which the boy names Flag. MGM had first begun shooting in 1941 with Spencer Tracy as the father, shelved the project, and restarted it years later with Peck.

In which 1947 Elia Kazan film does Gregory Peck play a journalist pretending to be Jewish?

Gentleman's Agreement was a film some Jewish studio executives warned producer Darryl Zanuck not to make. He went ahead anyway, and it won Best Picture.

What did Peck co-found in his Californian hometown in 1947 with Dorothy McGuire and Mel Ferrer?

A summer theatre: the three film stars put on its plays in a local high school auditorium, and Peck acted in several of them himself.

In Twelve O'Clock High (1949), Peck plays the new commander of what?

A hard-luck US bomber group is what his General Frank Savage must whip back into shape, and the strain of sending young crews out to die finally breaks the general himself.

Fox executives blamed the weak box office of The Gunfighter (1950) on what?

Peck's moustache, grown for period realism, horrified the studio. Darryl Zanuck said he would pay thousands of his own money to get it off, fearing it would put off the star's young female fans.

Which classic Western role did Peck turn down soon after making The Gunfighter?

Will Kane in High Noon struck him as too close to the gunfighter he had just played, so the part went to Gary Cooper, who won the Best Actor Oscar for it.

Peck played which fictional Napoleonic-era Royal Navy captain in a 1951 Raoul Walsh film?

Horatio Hornblower was bought by Warner Bros. as a vehicle for swashbuckler Errol Flynn, but by the time the cameras rolled Flynn was out and the thoughtful Peck had the ship.

For which Roman Holiday co-star did Peck insist on equal billing above the title?

Audrey Hepburn was a newcomer, but Peck told his agent she was going to win the Oscar in her first big picture and that he would look a fool if her name were not up there with his. She won.

Which star turned down the reporter's role in Roman Holiday before it went to Peck?

Cary Grant said no first. By most accounts the reporter looked like a supporting part beside the princess, and Peck hesitated for the very same reason.

Which blacklisted screenwriter wrote Roman Holiday but went uncredited for decades?

Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten, had Ian McLellan Hunter put his name on the script, collect the studio's pay and quietly pass it on to him.

The Million Pound Note (1954), with Peck as a penniless American handed a giant banknote, adapts whose story?

Mark Twain's tale has two rich brothers hand a stranded American a million-pound note and bet on whether he can live like a king without ever cashing it.

Who directed Peck as Captain Ahab in the 1956 film of Moby Dick?

John Huston had dreamed of casting his own father, Walter Huston, as Ahab, but Walter died in 1950. Peck took the part and later said the director himself should have played it.

Which actress starred opposite Peck in Designing Woman (1957) while her husband was gravely ill?

Lauren Bacall inherited a part planned for Grace Kelly, who had left Hollywood to become a princess. Her husband, Humphrey Bogart, was dying of cancer during the shoot.

Peck co-produced The Big Country (1958) with which director, then fell out with him?

William Wyler refused him a retake of one scene, so Peck walked off the set. The two had been good friends, and the rift between them lasted about three years.

In The Guns of Navarone (1961), what is the specialty of Gregory Peck's Captain Mallory?

Mountain climbing is why he is chosen: the fortress sits above a sheer sea cliff, and Mallory, once the world's greatest climber, has to lead the team up it after a shipwreck.

Robert Mitchum turned down Max Cady in Cape Fear (1962) until Peck's production sent him flowers and what else?

A case of bourbon arrived with a plea to take the part. By his own account Mitchum rang back: 'OK, I've drunk the bourbon, I'm drunk, I'll do it.'

Peck, Mitchum and Balsam all reappeared in different roles in the 1991 Cape Fear remake directed by whom?

Martin Scorsese turned the casting inside out: Peck, the upright lawyer of the 1962 film, came back in a cameo as a sleazy Southern lawyer.

For which role did Peck finally win the Academy Award for Best Actor?

Atticus Finch was modelled on Harper Lee's own father, and she gave Peck her late father's pocket watch. He had it with him on the night he won the Oscar.

In 2003 the American Film Institute ranked Peck's Mockingbird lawyer number one on which list?

Greatest movie heroes: the small-town lawyer beat Indiana Jones and James Bond to the top spot, and the list came out only days before Peck died.

Which actor made his big-screen debut as the reclusive Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird?

Robert Duvall got the part on the word of screenwriter Horton Foote, who had been struck by him in one of his own plays at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse.

Brock Peters, who read the eulogy at Peck's 2003 funeral, played which To Kill a Mockingbird character?

Tom Robinson, the innocent man on trial. In his eulogy Peters quoted Harper Lee's verdict that the film had given Peck the chance to play himself.

In The Omen (1976), Peck's Robert Thorn is made US ambassador and moves his family to which city?

London is where the horrors start, at his son's fifth birthday party. Charlton Heston had turned the part down, and the shocker became Peck's last big box-office hit.

In The Boys from Brazil (1978), Peck took the villainous role of which real Nazi doctor?

Josef Mengele was a part he took for one reason: the chance to act opposite Laurence Olivier, who plays the ageing Nazi hunter on his trail.

Peck played which American president in the 1982 miniseries The Blue and the Gray?

Abraham Lincoln was one of his own heroes, and the casting surprised nobody: for years the tall, grave star had been the butt of Abe Lincoln jokes.

In The Scarlet and the Black (1983), Peck's real-life Irish priest ran a wartime escape network from where?

The Vatican was neutral ground, so the Gestapo chief hunting Hugh O'Flaherty could not arrest him there. After the war the priest travelled to see that same man in prison every month for years.

Which president, a friend and fellow Democrat, awarded Peck the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

Lyndon B. Johnson gave it in 1969, calling Peck a humanitarian to whom Americans were deeply indebted.

Which president put the liberal Peck on his 'enemies list'?

Richard Nixon's White House listed him among its political opponents: Peck was a lifelong liberal campaigner who spoke out against the Vietnam War even while one of his sons was serving there.

Peck produced The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1972), about Vietnam War protesters tried for burning what?

Draft files, hundreds of them, were hauled out of a Maryland draft board and set alight by nine Catholic activists. Peck paid for the film out of his own pocket and took no part on screen.

In On the Beach (1959), Peck's US submarine crew takes refuge in which country as nuclear fallout drifts south?

Australia is where the fallout arrives last, leaving Melbourne the final great city on earth. Stanley Kramer shot the film there on location.

In the 1998 Moby Dick miniseries, Peck played Father Mapple opposite which actor as Ahab?

Patrick Stewart took the harpoon as Ahab while Peck, the Ahab of 1956, climbed into the pulpit to preach the sermon. The cameo won him a Golden Globe.

Reportedly, Peck died in 2003 before he could play which character in Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?

Grandpa Joe, who goes with Charlie on the factory tour, went to the Irish actor David Kelly after Peck's death in June 2003.

In a 1977 biopic, Peck played which American general?

Douglas MacArthur is removed from his Korean command by President Truman, a fall the film frames with the old general's farewell speech to the cadets at West Point.

Gregory Peck's grandson Ethan Peck took over which famous Star Trek role in 2019?

Spock, first played by Leonard Nimoy, passed to Ethan Peck in the second season of Star Trek: Discovery, and he kept the pointed ears for the spin-off Strange New Worlds.

Tamara Toumanova, Peck's leading lady in his first film, Days of Glory (1944), was already famous as what?

A ballerina, she plays a dancer who falls in with Peck's band of Russian partisans. He thought his own acting so amateurish that he never wanted to see the film again.

In which Biblical epic did Peck play a king who falls for the wife of one of his soldiers?

David and Bathsheba paired him with Susan Hayward under director Henry King and was one of the biggest hits of 1951. All three were back together a year later for another.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) adapted a short story by which author?

Ernest Hemingway sourly renamed it The Snows of Zanuck, after the Fox producer who padded out his short story and let its dying hero live.

Which 1951 Western did Peck later call the low point of his career?

Only the Valiant, a routine tale of cavalrymen holding a mountain pass against the Apache, was the film Peck always rated the worst he ever made.

Peck's second wife, Véronique Passani, first met him while working as what?

Newspaper reporter: she was sent to interview the star. His divorce came through in December 1955, and on New Year's Eve he married her.

Peck was Academy president when the April 1968 Oscars were delayed two days after whose assassination?

Martin Luther King Jr. was shot on April 4, and Peck put the ceremony back two days so that it fell after the funeral.

Which Italian star played opposite Peck in the 1966 spy caper Arabesque?

Sophia Loren plays an oil tycoon's mistress in a wardrobe made for her by Christian Dior, while Peck's visiting Oxford professor is dragged into a plot to decode a hieroglyphic message.

In Other People's Money (1991), Peck's folksy company chairman fights off a Wall Street raider played by whom?

Danny DeVito plays Larry the Liquidator, who schemes to take over the old-fashioned New England wire and cable firm that Peck's pipe-smoking chairman runs like a family.