A FAREWELL TO PECK
June 12, 2003

by Joe Sobran

     I always feel a slight guilt when an old Hollywood 
star dies. I feel I'm enjoying it too much.

     Death allows us to get sentimental, but it's usually 
mixed with pain. When celebrities die, however, there is 
little pain. We can just wallow in the memories of their 
public images. Even the slight pang is not unpleasant. 
There is more celebration than mourning about it. So it 
is with Gregory Peck.

     I was never a Peck fan. I found him stiff and 
monotonous. Even his warmest admirers wouldn't call him a 
versatile actor; he usually played the same earnest 
character, photogenic and resonant to a fault. Critics 
chuckled that he played Captain Ahab, in the 1956 film of 
MOBY DICK, like Abraham Lincoln with a peg leg.

     The word "Lincolnesque" was hauled out again for his 
Academy Award-winning performance in TO KILL A 
MOCKINGBIRD in 1962. As the mildly liberal Southern 
lawyer, he delivered his lines with his characteristic 
tone -- steady, unruffled bombast -- but without a trace 
of Southern flavor.

     In another famous role, in GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT 
(1947), Peck played a journalist posing as a Jew in order 
to expose prejudice; he didn't seem the least bit Jewish, 
and when I saw the film again a few years ago, with a 
largely Jewish audience, it had turned into a comedy: 
Peck's solemn acting -- more like preaching, really -- 
brought down the house.

     All in all, Peck's movies weren't that bad; when he 
wasn't miscast, he filled the bill passably. He belonged 
to a period when Hollywood stars and their studios liked 
to keep their images simple, unblemished, and heroic; 
think of Charlton Heston, Peck's co-star in THE BIG 
COUNTRY (1958), one of those epic Westerns of yore (Peck 
made more than his share of them).

     But when I watched him act, I always yearned for a 
little deflating irony. His relentlessly noble demeanor 
could make you root for the villain.

     That nearly happened in CAPE FEAR (also in 1962), a 
melodrama saved by Robert Mitchum as the mocking sadist 
who not only terrorizes Peck's family but brings Peck's 
lawyer-hero down to his own bestial level. For once Peck 
played a less-than-perfect character, and it was a 
refreshing change. The picture belongs to Mitchum, 
virile, scary, and amusing, but Peck manages to show the 
dark side absent from most of his work.

     One of Peck's most interesting films, rarely seen 
now, is Alfred Hitchcock's PARADINE CASE (1948), which I 
happened to watch again just this week. In this one Peck 
is a lawyer who falls in love with a beautiful client 
(Alida Valli) who is accused of murdering her husband. 
Convinced of her innocence, he alarms his wife (Ann Todd) 
with his zeal to exonerate her. But his efforts backfire 
bitterly when his client pulls the rug out from under 
him. It's not that Peck's acting is particularly 
distinguished, but Hitchcock, with a good plot, makes the 
best use of his qualities.

     Peck was one of the last relics of the old Hollywood 
star system, in which stars weren't expected to delve 
into the characters they played. That began to change a 
half-century ago with the advent of Marlon Brando, the 
anti-Peck. Good looks and deep voices became boring, 
stagy. Masculinity acquired an edge Peck never had; film 
acting became "serious." Stanislavsky had arrived in posh 
Beverly Hills.

     You have only to watch a couple of Peck films to 
understand why the young Brando was so exciting. Brando, 
now pushing 80 (and 400 pounds), isn't that much younger 
than Peck, but he has never become what you'd call 
venerable. He continues to defy respectability, if it 
still exists (and if it doesn't, he's one of the 
reasons). It's hard to imagine Peck scratching himself or 
cussing on the screen. He might play a Nazi, but never 
the leader of a motorcycle gang.

     Peck was not so much an actor as a standard 
ingredient in the old Hollywood recipe -- the leading man 
as Eagle Scout. Even when he was Doctor Mengele, you felt 
that, whatever his shortcomings, he might make a good 
husband. He communicated neither humor nor danger, just a 
durable sort of decency.

     It's admittedly not much of a eulogy, but you'd 
rather your daughter married Gregory Peck than Marlon 
Brando.
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