Gregory Peck

Eldred Gregory Peck was born on April 5, 1916, in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, to Bernice Mae Peck and Gregory Pearl Peck, a chemist and pharmacist originally from Rochester, New York. His father carried English and Irish heritage, while his mother was of English and Scottish descent. Peck's parents divorced when he was five, and he was subsequently raised by his maternal grandmother, who brought him to the cinema each week. At ten, he enrolled at St. John's Military Academy in Los Angeles, a Catholic military school. Following his grandmother's death while he was a student there, he returned to San Diego at fourteen to live with his father, attending San Diego High School before briefly enrolling at San Diego State Teacher's College, where he joined the track team and took his first theater and public-speaking courses.

Peck transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, as an English major and pre-medical student, standing 6 feet 3 inches tall and rowing on the university crew. His deep, well-modulated voice drew attention during a public speaking course, prompting him to pursue acting. Recruited by Edwin Duerr, director of the university's Little Theater, he appeared in five plays during his senior year, including the role of Starbuck in Moby Dick. He left Berkeley before completing his degree and relocated to New York City, where he studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse under Sanford Meisner. During this period he worked at the 1939 World's Fair as a barker, at Rockefeller Center as a tour guide for NBC television, and at Radio City Music Hall. He also appeared in five plays at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia, including Family Portrait and On Earth As It Is, working in exchange for food. Before 1940, he had also done some modeling work.

His formal stage career began in 1941 with a Katharine Cornell production of George Bernard Shaw's The Doctor's Dilemma, in which he played the secretary. The production opened in San Francisco one week before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Peck made his Broadway debut the following year, in 1942, as the lead in Emlyn Williams' drama The Morning Star, and later that same year appeared in The Willow and I alongside Edward Pawley. He was exempt from military service during World War II due to a back injury sustained during dance and movement training with Martha Graham, which kept him active in theater throughout the war years. Over the course of his stage career, Peck performed in approximately fifty plays in total, encompassing his Broadway productions, road tours, and summer theater engagements.

His film career began with the war-romance Days of Glory in 1944, directed by Jacques Tourneur at RKO Radio Pictures. That same year, he earned his first Academy Award nomination for his performance in The Keys of the Kingdom, directed by John M. Stahl. A succession of prominent films followed, including the romantic drama The Valley of Decision in 1945, Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound in 1945, and the family film The Yearling in 1946. Later in the decade he appeared in The Paradine Case in 1947 and The Great Sinner in 1948, both of which received lukewarm commercial responses. Gentleman's Agreement, also from 1947, addressed antisemitism, while Twelve O'Clock High in 1949 centered on military leadership and post-traumatic stress disorder during World War II.

Peck's international profile expanded considerably in the 1950s and 1960s. He appeared in the book-to-film adaptation Captain Horatio Hornblower and the biblical drama David and Bathsheba, both released in 1951. He starred alongside Ava Gardner in The Snows of Kilimanjaro in 1952 and opposite Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday in 1953. His performance as Atticus Finch in the 1962 adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, a story centered on racial inequality, earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor. Other significant films across his career included Moby Dick in 1956, The Guns of Navarone in 1961, Cape Fear in 1962, The Omen in 1976, and The Boys from Brazil in 1978. In 1983, he starred opposite Christopher Plummer in The Scarlet and the Black, portraying Hugh O'Flaherty, a Catholic priest who rescued thousands of escaped Allied prisoners of war and Jewish people in Rome during World War II. He also appeared in a 1998 television miniseries adaptation of Moby Dick and in the 1991 remake of Cape Fear. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Peck the twelfth-greatest male star of Classic Hollywood Cinema.

Beyond film, Peck remained engaged with the stage throughout his life, with his Broadway activity spanning from 1942 to 1992. In addition to The Morning Star and The Willow and I, his Broadway credits include Sons and Soldiers and The Will Rogers Follies. He was also active in public life, challenging the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 and was regarded as a political opponent by President Richard Nixon. In 1969, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of his humanitarian efforts. In 1996, Peck donated $25,000 to the Berkeley rowing crew in honor of his former coach, Ky Ebright. He died in his sleep on June 12, 2003, from bronchopneumonia at the age of 87.