Among the celebrated pantheon of Hollywood royalty, few are as well-respected and universally adored as Gregory Peck. For more than fifty years, he was a major presence in the theater, on television, and most importantly, on the big screen. For many, Peck was a symbol of the American man at his best – a pillar of moral courage and a constant defender of traditional values. As General MacArthur, Melville’s Captain Ahab, and Atticus Finch, he presented audiences with compelling stories of strength and masculinity.

Eldred Gregory Peck was born in 1916, and spent most of his early life in and around La Jolla, California. By the time he was six, his parents had divorced. His mother married a travelling salesman and was often away with her new husband, while his father, a local pharmacist, spent much of the time working the night-shift. For a number of years he lived with his maternal grandmother, but at the age of ten was sent to St. John’s Military Academy in Los Angeles. The four years he spent there were important in forming his sense of personal discipline. There he also began to acquire a sensitivity to the social importance of authority figures – a topic that remained important throughout his career. After the Academy, he returned to live with his father, and to attend public high school.

After graduating, Peck enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley. Greatly influenced by his father’s desires for him to be a doctor, Peck began as a pre-med student. By the time he was a senior, however, he found his real interests to be in writing and acting. Initially drawn to the communal, almost familial, aspects of the theater, Peck soon realized that he had a natural gift as both an expressive actor and a storyteller. After graduating in 1939, he changed his name from Eldred to Gregory and moved to New York. There, his abilities were almost immediately recognized. Within a year he began to fill small roles in travelling shows and in 1942, made his debut on Broadway with “The Morning Star.” Though many of his early plays were doomed to short runs, it seemed clear that Peck was destined for something bigger. In 1944 that “something bigger” arrived in the form of his first two Hollywood roles, as Vladimir in DAYS OF GLORY and Father Francis Chisholm in THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM.

While DAYS OF GLORY was coolly received, his role as the taciturn Scottish missionary in THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM was a resounding triumph and brought him his first Oscar nominations for Best Actor. This early success provided him the rare opportunity of working with the best directors in Hollywood. Over the next three years he appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s SPELLBOUND (1945), King Vidor’s DUEL IN THE SUN (1946), and Elia Kazan’s GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT (1947). More than any other of his early roles, it was as Phil Green in the ground-breaking depiction of American anti-Semitism, GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT, that solidified his image as a man of great moral conviction. Despite concerns over public acceptance of the project, it surprised many by winning an Oscar for Best Picture and a nomination for Best Actor. This success seemed not only a validation of Peck’s abilities as an artist but of his moral convictions as well.

Though an amiable and fun-loving man at home, Peck’s stern presence made him one of the screen’s great patriarchs. Tough and caring, he was the quintessential mid-century American man – the good-looking romantic lead across from Audrey Hepburn as well as the rugged World War II bomber commander. For many, the actor and the characters he portrayed were inseparable; the authority of his passionate yet firm demeanor was attractive to post-war Americans who longed for a more stable time.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Peck continued to challenge himself as an actor, appearing in thrillers, war films, westerns and in his best known film, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Based on the book by Harper Lee, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD addresses problems of racism and moral justice in personal and powerful ways. As Atticus Finch, a lawyer in a small Southern town, Peck created a character that remains a great example of an individual’s struggle for humanity within deeply inhumane conditions. It seems clear however, that the reason for Peck’s constant assertion that TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is his best (and favorite) film, was the film’s attention to the lives of children and the importance of family. From THE YEARLING (1946) to CAPE FEAR (1962) familial concern has been the underlying structure from which his greatest characters have grown.

While continuing to act on television and in Hollywood throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including a remake of CAPE FEAR in 1991, Peck focused much of his energy on spending time with his wife, children, and grandchildren. For Peck, life as a father and as a public figure have been inseparable-; he was simultaneously a major voice against the Vietnam war, while remaining a patriotic supporter of his son who was fighting there. If years of breathing life into characters such as Captain Keith Mallory and General MacArthur taught him anything, it was that life during wartime was profoundly complex; and rarely has there been a time free from war or struggle. In his more than fifty films, Peck continually attempted to investigate these complex struggles, and in doing so, created a library of stories that shed light on human possibility and social reality.

At 85, Peck turned his attention back to where he got his start, the stage. He traveled the country visiting small play houses and colleges, speaking about his life and experiences as a father, a celebrity, and as an actor.

Gregory Peck passed away on June 12th, 2003, at the age of 87.

On December 10, 1938, David O. Selznick burned down Atlanta. On the back of his Culver City studio, Selznick had begun filming what would be his and Hollywood’s greatest triumph, GONE WITH THE WIND. Selznick was just thirty-six years old and already a legend. He had run a major studio before the age of thirty and created his own studio by the time he was thirty-three. With a harsh and controlling demeanor, he dominated every film he made. In a town of Mayers, Zanucks, and Goldwyns, David Selznick was king. But one of his most lasting contributions would have nothing to do with his grand, southern epic. Instead, it would be bringing to America a rotund, quiet director who was the shining star of British cinema. In the summer of 1939, David Selznick brought Alfred Hitchcock to Hollywood.

David Oliver Selznick was born into a wealthy Pennsylvania family in 1902. His father Lewis J. Selznick was a successful film producer, and David studied the industry from his early years. As a young man he worked for his father, moving to Hollywood and MGM in 1926. With a voracious appetite for success he worked his way from the bottom of Hollywood to the top—moving from MGM, where he was a story editor and associate producer, to Paramount as an associate director, to RKO as vice president of production, and back to MGM. Returning to MGM he played a crucial part of the production of a number of major films including George Cukor’s DAVID COPPERFIELD and DINNER AT EIGHT. Selznick longed for his independence and in 1936 formed Selznick International. Within three years he had secured his place among the elite of Hollywood with the production of one of its greatest films, GONE WITH THE WIND. While finishing the film, Selznick hired an English director who was looking to make a go of it in Hollywood.

Alfred Hitchcock was born in 1899 to a middle-class London family. In 1914 he found a job with the Famous Players—Lasky Corporation as a title card designer, beginning his long career in the film industry. Within a few years he had moved up in the company to directing films. Working with the Lasky Corporation in Berlin, Hitchcock made his first two pictures. A few years later Hitchcock made the film he would note as the beginning of his career. THE LODGER (1926), a retelling of the story of Jack the Ripper, began a string of suspense films that would bring him to the top of the English cinema. Among the other well-known films of his English period were BLACKMAIL (1929), THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934), and THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS (1935). The English cinema had little money, and Hitchcock longed to be in Hollywood, where the world’s best films were being made.

For Hitchcock, being a director meant being the primary creative source for the film—working on everything from the script to the props. In Hollywood, however, the power of the studios put producers in charge. For the Hollywood of the 1930s, screenwriters and directors were interchangeable technicians, not given serious consideration in the artistic decisions of the film. More than any other producer, Selznick took advantage of this and controlled nearly every aspect of his movies. Not surprisingly, Hitchcock and Selznick had difficulties from the very first film they made, REBECCA (1940). Disagreements began with Hitchcock’s adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s novel and lasted through the film’s completion. For the final scene, Selznick wanted smoke to form the shape of an “R” in the sky. Hitchcock was appalled. He suggested a subtler metaphor: the memory of Rebecca should go up in flames with an “R” embroidered on a bed pillow. Hitchcock won, but he felt battered by Selznick and resented his producer’s complete command of post-production.

The two didn’t work together again until 1945, with their hit SPELLBOUND. Though Hitchcock had more experience and notoriety in Hollywood by this time, his relationship with Selznick remained a struggle. Both men had different ways of making movies, and both believed they deserved control of the picture. In the end, Selznick won, but it would be the last time. Earning both men Oscars, SPELLBOUND marked a change in Hitchcock’s career and in the future of Hollywood. Nearing the end of his contract with Selznick, Hitchcock had become a major force in the movie industry. Hitchcock’s notoriety and his ability to independently create successful films of substance signaled, for many, the rise of the director and the decline of the producer. Though the studios and producers would remain, after Hitchcock it would be the director whose artistic vision mattered.

With Hitchcock’s career just beginning and Selznick’s on the decline, the final year of their collaboration would mark turning points in both men’s lives. In 1946 Selznick was deeply enmeshed in his epic film DUEL IN THE SUN and Hitchcock was working independently on NOTORIOUS. When both films were released, each man’s future seemed clear. NOTORIOUS was a masterpiece, and one in which Hitchcock had finally been given full control, and DUEL IN THE SUN was a flop, nearly bankrupting Selznick. Contractually obliged to finish one more film with Selznick, an uninspired Hitchcock worked on THE PARADINE CASE (1948), after which both men went their separate ways. For Selznick there was to be only a few more films. By the time of his death in 1965, Alfred Hitchcock had made dozens of movies including ROPE (1948), DIAL M FOR MURDER (1954) VERTIGO (1957), PSYCHO (1960), and THE BIRDS (1963), becoming one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. After their collaboration, the movie industry would never be the same—not for Selznick, not for Hitchcock, not for anyone.