A Farewell to Peck
June 12, 2003
I
always feel a slight guilt when an old Hollywood star dies. I feel
Im enjoying it too much.
Death allows us to get
sentimental, but its 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 wouldnt 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
Gentlemans Agreement (1947), Peck played a
journalist posing as a Jew in order to expose prejudice; he didnt
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: Pecks
solemn acting more like preaching, really brought down
the house.
All in all, Pecks movies
werent that bad; when he wasnt 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, Pecks co-star in The Big Country
(1958), one of those epic Westerns of yore (Peck made more than his share
of them).
![[Breaker quote: The leading man as Eagle Scout]](2003breakers/030612.gif) 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 Pecks
family but brings Pecks 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 Pecks most
interesting films, rarely seen now, is Alfred Hitchcocks
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. Its not that Pecks 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 werent 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), isnt that much younger than
Peck, but he has never become what youd call venerable. He
continues to defy respectability, if it still exists (and if it doesnt,
hes one of the reasons). Its 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.
Its admittedly not much
of a eulogy, but youd rather your daughter married Gregory Peck
than Marlon Brando.
Joseph Sobran
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