Shortly before his death, Gregory Peck was declared the best of the “good heroes” of cinema. Mainly because of his iconic performance as Atticus Finch, the upstanding lawyer who defends a black man and rises to his feet in the darkness of the American South, in Robert Mulligan’s classic Shadows and Silence, which also earned him his only Best Actor Oscar Role in 1963. However, the great Hollywood star, in his long career in the cinema, did not only “comfort” himself in good and heroic roles, as he played a huge range of characters, up to the unforgettable and even creepy incarnation of the perverted Nazi doctor Megele, in Franklin Schaffner’s excellent thriller You Exterminated the Executioner of Auschwitz.

Gregory Peck, although he possessed one of those rare beauty charms – he was tall, athletic, with a clean masculine face, a wonderful deep voice – was a model star for Hollywood, he will try and take risks with many roles, choosing characters that they could highlight the fine line that separates the greatness of the human spirit from its dark fall.

Along with the other “golden children” of his time, Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, he will make his mark on world cinema, playing everything from dramas, film noirs and comedies to westerns, adventures and wars. while he will work with almost all the great directors of his generation and of course the shining stars of the time, such as Audrey Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Ava Gardner, Susan Hayward, Sophia Loren, Lorraine Bacall, Angie Dickinson and many others.

Completing 20 years since his death (June 12, 2003), it is an opportunity to get to know the man behind the legend and his most important moments in his long and artistic career in cinema.

From sports to theatrical play

Eldred Gregory Peck was born on April 5, 1916, in San Diego, California. The father, who was a pharmacist, left his family when little Gregory was five years old, to be raised by his grandparents. Of English, Irish and Scottish descent, she will be raised as a Roman Catholic. At age 10 he would be sent to a Catholic military school in Los Angeles, only to leave at 14, returning to San Diego to live with his father. In 1934 he will enroll at San Diego State University, where he will join the track team and take his first theater classes. Aspiring to become a doctor, he will transfer to Berkeley, where he will be forced to work as an assistant in the university’s kitchen to make ends meet, while also being a member of the rowing team. However, his voice will initially gain the attention of some of his professors and an acting teacher will encourage him to take up acting. Something that would start as a game for Peck, but would quickly become his main focus, eventually playing in five varsity plays.

Financial difficulties and Martha Graham

Gregory Peck, after all, never graduated from university, owing a course, but as he said “I got everything I needed from university”. He will go to New York to study acting with actor and great teacher Sanford Meissner. Despite the financial difficulties – he will be forced to sleep in parks or work as a tour guide, as a “barker” and model, in exchange for a plate of food – he will manage to enter the theater professionally in 1941, playing in Bernard Shaw’s play “The Dilemma of doctor,” one week before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The curious thing is that because of the dance lessons he received from Martha Graham, he will be exempted from military service, as in one lesson he will injure his back.

The keys to paradise

In 1944 he will enter the cinema as the protagonist in Jacques Tourner’s film “Break the Bonds”, a hymn about the resistance of the Soviets against the Nazis. A film that didn’t go particularly well, but Peck had received his baptism of fire and the experienced Turner will cut his theatrics, which do not keep pace with the screen. It will be followed by the dramatic “The Keys to Paradise”, where Peck will be in every shot and will be nominated for the first Academy Award for Best Actor. The avenue of glory is now in front of him…

Hitchcock and Bergman

In 1945 it will be time for him to star in Hitchcock’s classic thriller “Night of Agony”, alongside Ingrid Bergman, a film that will break the box office in London and will be nominated for six Oscars. As Peck revealed, he would also have a brief fling with Bergman, the hottest actress in Hollywood at the time, even though they were both married – he to Greta Kokonen, whom he would divorce in 1955 to marry Veronique Pasani and they will live together until the end of his life.

A flurry of movies

The pace of films that Gregory Peck is making now is stormy. Some of the most notable films he will star in are: Kazan’s drama “Gentlemen’s Agreement”, Hitchcock’s thriller “Paradyne Case”, King Windor’s western “Duel in the Sun”, Raoul Walsh’s film noir “The Great Sinner “, the Henry King western “Rigo the Big Gun,” King’s romantic drama “Snows of Kilimanjaro,” and the William Wyler-directed romantic comedy “Rome Vacation,” which brought Oscar debut to Audrey Hepburn, who played alongside him.

Iconic roles and Greece

In 1956 he will star in John Huston’s famous adventure “Moby Dick”, in the role of a whaling captain who has become sickly obsessed with hunting a white whale. Another iconic performance for Peck, although two years later he would be truly magnificent in Wyler’s Western Bloody Horizons, carrying the burden of a brave but peaceful man. A film that paved the way for peaceful Westerns, as the great Wyler using allegorical elements and symbolism, will criticize the Cold War and the hysteria of the time. In 1961 he will have his Greek moments, as he will come to our country for the filming of the satisfying war adventure “The Cannons of Navarone”, while the following year he will play in the suspenseful thriller “The Cape of Fear”, with ” satanic” Robert Mitcham.

A man with values

In 1962, however, he will shoot the film of his life, the court drama “Shadows and Silence”, an anti-racist film by the important Robert Mulligan. Gregory Peck will deservedly win the only Oscar of his career, for his deeply multi-layered, with expressive pauses, interpretation, giving the hero universal values.

Values ​​that Gregory Peck served throughout his life, as he faced McCarthyism, stood by ideological artists, was always an enemy of obscurantism, warmongers and social injustice, while the anti-establishment Hollywood will remember him as the president of the Motion Picture Academy which postponed the 1968 Academy Awards due to the assassination of Martin Luther King. As John Huston, who didn’t give a damn, said: “Greg is one of the straightest men I’ve ever met, there’s no one like him.”

The American Film Institute has ranked him twelfth on its list of the 25 greatest stars of all time.