Peck freelanced past Hollywood's studio contracts
After Days of Glory in 1944, Gregory Peck refused the studio system and freelanced so he could pick roles. The Keys of the Kingdom brought his first Oscar nomination; Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird brought the win. AFI later named him twelfth among classic Hollywood's male greats.
Eldred Gregory Peck was born on 5 April 1916 in La Jolla, San Diego, and raised Catholic. Stage work—more than fifty plays and three Broadway shows—followed Neighborhood Playhouse study with Sanford Meisner; he sometimes slept in Central Park while broke. Film breakthrough critical success came with The Keys of the Kingdom in 1944, aging on screen from twenties to eighty as a missionary priest, earning his first Best Actor nomination.
A run of hits included The Valley of Decision, Hitchcock's Spellbound, and The Yearling. Roles often carried moral fiber: Gentleman's Agreement in 1947 on antisemitism, Twelve O'Clock High two years later on wartime command and trauma, and the Oscar-winning Atticus Finch. Other landmarks spanned Moby Dick, The Guns of Navarone, Cape Fear, The Omen, and The Boys from Brazil. He challenged HUAC in 1947, drew Nixon's enmity, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Lyndon B. Johnson in 1969 for humanitarian work.
Berkeley theatre—five senior-year plays including Starbuck in Moby Dick—redirected him from a near-miss degree toward New York. He dropped Eldred, told classmates he had all he needed from university, and left without graduating one missing course. Broadway debut as lead in Emlyn Williams's The Morning Star came in 1942 after earlier 1941 stage work in Katharine Cornell's The Doctor's Dilemma. He died in his sleep of bronchopneumonia at eighty-seven on 12 June 2003. Independence marked his career: after early stiff notices, producers chased him, yet he kept choosing parts outside exclusive studio lock.
Source: Gregory Peck
