Peck was a link to the ‘golden age’

With the passing of Gregory Peck, Hollywood’s roster of living

legends is just about exhausted.

Peck was one of the last links to the movies’ “golden age” of the

1940s and ‘50s, when its stars were larger than life, at least in the

eyes of their fans. He was also an actor of enormous talent and

range, one who was never content playing stalwart, incorruptible

heroes exclusively.

He lived long enough to see his Atticus Fitch character from

1962’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” named the top movie hero of all time

in a televised special that aired just a week before his death. He

could well have finished first in the villain category for his

depiction of evil incarnate in “The Boys From Brazil.”

That honor went to Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter in “The

Silence of the Lambs.” Gregory Peck occupied a rare plateau among the

Hollywood greats, one on which performers existed by virtue of their

ability, not their notoriety. This level of greatness tempered by

modesty was shared by a very few actors, most of whom (James Stewart,

Henry Fonda, Jack Lemmon) have since shuffled off this mortal coil.

It didn’t hurt, of course, that Peck was the physical epitome of a

movie star when he began his career in the mid-1940s in such diverse

assignments as “Spellbound” and “Duel in the Sun.” But it was

“Gentlemen’s Agreement” in 1947 that chiseled his image into the

consciousness of movie fans and dealt a swift blow to anti-Semitism

in America.

Peck’s career flourished with such movies as “Roman Holiday,” “The

Man in the Gray Flannel Suit,” “Moby Dick,” “On the Beach,” “The Guns

of Navarone” and “Cape Fear” before “Mockingbird” came along and

thrust him onto Oscar’s stage. But perhaps his most important work

came in the 1970s in the guise of two historical figures -- Douglas

MacArthur in “MacArthur” and Josef Mengele in “The Boys From Brazil.”

In the latter movie, he co-starred with Laurence Olivier -- who

played a fiendish Nazi in “Marathon Man,” but was a Nazi hunter this

time -- squaring off with Peck’s Mengele in a memorable climactic

scene in which the latter character became dog chow for a pack of

Dobermans. It may have been a supreme fabrication, but it’s still a

throat catcher to watch.

Like most great movie actors, Peck began his career on the stage.

A native of La Jolla, he helped found the La Jolla Playhouse with

fellow rising stars Dorothy McGuire and Mel Ferrer, and continued to

support that theater even into his declining years. His last major

movie role came a dozen years ago as the president of a

takeover-targeted wire and cable company in “Other People’s Money.”

Few actors have had Gregory Peck’s effect on audiences, and fewer

yet are still around to accept our veneration. Richard Widmark and

Charlton Heston fit that description, but their number continues to

diminish.

*

They say that deaths of famous people happen in threes, so after

Gregory Peck and David Brinkley departed within hours of each other,

I was waiting for that third shoe to drop.

This week, it did. We lost one of the greatest stage actors of all

time when Hume Cronyn succumbed just a month short of his 92nd

birthday.

Cronyn left behind a distinguished stage and screen career, much

of it intertwined with his wife, Jessica Tandy, who preceded him in

death in 1994. Their shining hour together was “The Gin Game,”

performed on Broadway and televised by PBS to share with all

audiences.

In the 1970s, Cronyn played Captain Queeg in “The Caine Mutiny

Court-Martial,” which I reviewed at the Ahmanson Theater in Los

Angeles.

He might have been, at that time, a bit long in the tooth for that

role, but he was brilliant, nevertheless.

Losing Hume Cronyn and Gregory Peck in the same week leaves a

gaping hole in our stage and screen industry.