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Louis B. Mayer was anxious to sign him up for a seven-year contract. Darryl Zanuck was eager to trust him with the leading role in a $3,000,000 production (Keys of the Kingdom), regardless of the fact that Peck was unknown and unwilling even to make a screen test. David Selznick, who now claims to have recognized Pecks talent from the first, was also in there nibbling (characteristically, Selznick eventually walked away with the lion's share). There is a touch of more than Hollywood's habitual fantasy in these frantic negotiations for the services of a promising, impoverished, idealistic, unknown young stage actor.
Peck himself was both obliging and obstinate. He obstinately asked for clauses permitting him, for instance, half-time on Broadway (something unheard-of for a movie beginner)—and he obligingly, in the long run, let himself in for enough commitments to keep him hopelessly busy in the studios for a solid seven years. When the moguls were through shuffling around their pieces of Mr. Peck, he was the most owned and least available leading man in Hollywood, and one of the most valuable.
At present, he is partitioned as follows: to M-G-M for two more pictures; to 20th Century-Fox for two; to David Oliver Selznick for three.
"Early American." In spite of Hollywood's bad reputation for misusing talent, studios normally try hard with anyone they regard as promising. With Peck, the moviemakers were inclined to outdo themselves. Each studio needed a major male star, and Peck looked like a good risk. Moreover, since no studio had been able to snare him outright, each was determined to sweat the best possible use out of him. Peck was inadvertently handed some bum pictures; but each one was a major production. And during his first years, he had the run of a virtually clear field. Since he ran it as seriously and efficiently as if the field were swarming with tacklers, he had established himself solidly by the time his competitors got back out of uniform.
Peck's fleeting resemblance to Gary Cooper was undoubtedly helpful, at the start. Neither moviemakers nor moviegoers take quickly, as a rule, to a wholly unprecedented face. But it was soon clear also that Peck was no carbon copy, but a distinct and engaging new personality. He has a face which Mary Morris of PM has aptly described as "early American." It can, of course, be dangerous to look enough like Abraham Lincoln to suffer by comparison or to seem to be plagiarizing. At certain unfortunate moments Peck looks merely like a pretty Lincoln; but he never looks like a silly one, a road-show impersonator, or a sandwich man for the Republican Party.