Word: pecked
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Peck wasn't just an icon. He was an actor, a smart one. He picked hit properties in a wide variety of genres: romantic comedy (Roman Holiday), action (The Guns of Navarone), horror (The Omen). He was bold in taking roles--Ahab, General MacArthur--that twisted his noble-man image. He assayed his share of misanthropes (including Nazi monster Josef Mengele) and western hombres as craggy as a butte. But Peck will be best remembered as the movies' exemplary father figure, who often, and surprisingly, revealed the pacifism at the heart of heroism...
Good example: Cape Fear, with Peck as the head of a family menaced by all-time cunning sicko Robert Mitchum. At the climax, Peck trains a gun on the villain. Shoot 'im, Greg! But no. This time the good guy is not going to kill the bad guy; the rotter will be tried, convicted and imprisoned. A less confident actor might have let this verdict sound like weakness, but Peck sells the notion that life in jail is as unpleasant as a bullet...
Winners and losers are all too clearly defined in today's movies. Peck's best films always found thoughtful shades of gray. Atticus has taken on the case of a black man accused of raping a white woman--a perilous assignment in an Alabama town in the 1930s. He argues his case brilliantly, demolishes the opposition, convinces each member of the movie audience...and loses. But Atticus has shown courage in the fight. As he leaves the courtroom in defeat, a black preacher attending the trial whispers a command to Atticus' 6-year-old daughter. "Miss Jean Louise, stand...
Later in the film, Peck embodies a kind of pacifist resistance. The white woman's racist father sees Peck with some blacks and spits in his face. Peck, with ferocious dignity, takes out a handkerchief, wipes off the insult and walks away--the victor by not fighting back. Good man to lead; tough act to follow...
...dangerous to confuse an actor with his movie roles. But by all accounts the reel and the real Gregory Peck were close kin. He was a model of probity, a loyal friend to colleagues in distress, a father confessor to the Hollywood community. He chaired the National Society of This, the American Academy of That. He was laden with official honors: Lyndon Johnson gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom; Richard Nixon put him on his Enemies List. Peck received perhaps his sweetest laurel last week when the reclusive Lee, on hearing of his death, said, "Gregory Peck...