Cinema: Leading Man

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One of his gravest dangers as an actor may be his good looks, which invest any 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 he is, in fact, an average human being—luckier, better looking and more gifted than they, but essentially one of themselves.

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."

His deepest interests are afterhours. They center in his home, his wife, and, above all, in his sons, 3½-year-old Jonathan and Stephan, 1½. The three-man romps, in which he hurls the youngsters against the softer pieces of furniture like a couple of shrieking medicine balls, give him the best moments of his day. Sociable, in a non-Hollywood way, he spends two or three evenings a week over a home dinner, whiskey, and talk with one or two of his handful of close friends (closest: Richard Conte). He actively dislikes nightclubs.

A 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 man in Hollywood; it does not come natural to him either to tell anecdotes or to inspire them. David Selznick has called Peck the best-informed actor in Hollywood, which is probably an exaggeration. Selznick may have meant to say that Peck has one clear sign of a vigorous intelligence: an eagerness to keep on learning.

Like many actors, he is sanguine about a piece of work while he is at it, but he soon cools into a stern self-critic. During the filming of Duel in the Sun, he talked —jocosely, to be sure—about out-heeling Satan and out-Laurencing Olivier. Now he says of Duel: "I didn't do much acting. I rode horses, necked with Jennifer, and shot poor old Charley Bickford." Of Valley of Decision: "My agent wanted me to be seen with a big female star. Greer's audience, he said, will be a good thing for you. It was a very good maneuver. The movie? I didn't like it." Of Spellbound: "I was lousy." Of The Yearling: "I would have liked the picture better with its Walt Disney aspects pushed into the background. It was much too lushly done, and we have to take part of the rap."

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