Word: pecks
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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After-Hours. Caught neck-deep among Hollywood's peculiar blessings and obligations, Peck likes being regarded as a good actor. But he takes little pleasure in his fame, and none, apparently, in the standing, prestige or power he might have. He admits to some laziness, but adds, with proper self-respect: "I can be conscientious as hell under pressure...
...role he undertakes with a certain idealized, legendary quality. But his fine-featured face gives him enormous range as a movie hero: while remaining a virile 6 ft. 3 in., he can suggest, if the plot demands it, a man who is delicate, ill, or even morally weak. Peck appeals, as a very popular male star must, to both bobby-soxers and their mothers. He manages this feat without presenting himself as a big brother, as a cute, asexual nephew, or as a sophisticated porch climber. Men also immediately like him and wish him well; they feel that...
...friend has suggested that Peck virtually never goes out evenings because he is terrified at the possibility of running into some of the community's better-known Bright Boys. "I am short of the old I-am," he explains. "When I get mixed up with Nunnally Johnson or Herman Mankiewicz or Ben Hecht, I am struck dumb. I feel more comfortable in front of a camera." Actually, the very sound brain in his head doesn't run either to wit or to highbrow intellectual discussion. Alfred Hitchcock has said of him that he is probably the most anecdoteless...
...Short End. By Hollywood standards, Peck is shamefully underpaid. Up to last year, he was still at the mercy of his own commitments and of the studios to which he was committed. He still suffers from being an obliging man more interested in acting than in money. In order to get the part of the millowner's son in Valley of Decision, he had to sign for three additional pictures at $45,000, $55,000 and $65,000 respectively. One of these, The Yearling, has been made. At the time Peck made it he was worth at least...
...Peck still clings doggedly to the notion of being a stage actor. It is not that he considers himself too good for movies (he doesn't think he is good enough), nor even that he thinks plays are better than pictures. But he still believes that the theater is the best place to learn how to act. He has been instrumental in organizing a Selznick-financed group of movie people (Cotten, Jennifer Jones, Dorothy McGuire, et al.) who do stage-acting in their spare time. But it will be a long time-three years at least-before...