R.I.P Gregory Peck (1916-2003)
Gregory Peck, one of the last surviving actors from the old Hollywood studio system died today at 87. I best knew him as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, the role that minted him an icon, and in Gentlemen’s Agreement, one of the first Hollywood films to talk about anti-semitism.
Late in his life, Peck stopped acting and earned a modest living showing slides of his films and talking to live audiences about his life and career. I saw one of these presentations in maybe 1993 at the Power Center in Ann Arbor when I was home from college on summer vacation. While the audience gushed about how some of his movies had changed their lives, Peck simply nodded, thanked them and answered their questions as best he could. One earnest college student asked him to autograph her copy of “Mockingbird” in the middle of the show. Peck smiled and asked her to come backstage afterward. He’d be happy to.
I remember at the time, in all my youthful arrogance, thinking this was no way to go out, surrounded by people who remembered you then instead of admired you know, reminiscing instead of doing. I think about that warm June night in Michigan now and have great respect for Gregory Peck. When Warren Zevon found out last year that his lung cancer was inoperate and his time here was short, he went to work finishing an album. I’m a musician, he said, this is what I do. I don’t know how to do anything else.
Gregory Peck was an actor, a difficult, draining profession. By that summer in 1993, he was done. And yet he had fans all over the world who wanted to hear him, hear what the movies were once like and what all those years being a part of them had meant to him. So he remembered, in public, for us and maybe a little for himself. The biggest part of his life was over. He knew that, made peace with it and spent his time enjoying the fruits and wisdom of that hard work, mostly with his family and sometimes with the people that had watched him along the way.
Looking back on it now, I think Gregory Peck knew how he wanted his life to end and did it with dignity and grace. A little older and wiser myself, I understand that better now than I once did.