(5 of 5)
The 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 $150,000 a picture (standard fee for topflight stars). Today, if he chose to operate that way, he might command and get $200,000 or more. But he will make two more pictures for M-G-M—at $55,000 and $65,000. His sensible attitude: "Every good picture lengthens your screen life."
In his first really profitable year, 1946, his income was $220,000, of which he kept $46,000. He recently bought a $50,000 house in the Thomas Mann-Joseph Cotten neighborhood of Pacific Palisades, and is putting whatever money he can salvage into a heavy annuity program.
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 he can hope to work again on Broadway. "The stage, yes," he now says with a hounded look, "when 1 get through with these commitments."
The Next 20 Years. In his new picture, Peck contends manfully with a role which only a virtuoso might have saved. But there is no good reason why either Peck or his admirers need worry about his future. For the camera's purposes, his lean, bony face is the sort that is practically indestructible. For the next 20 years, he is not likely to look enough older to damage him as a leading man. And his place in movies is already high, secure and respectably unique.
He is U.S. cinema's first male idol to resist typing: the first to devote himself successfully to the art of acting, rather than a stylized display of physique and personality. He has shown no signs of that depth of intuition which would suggest that he will ever become a great actor—as Olivier, for instance, may become. But he seldom fails to turn in a performance that is honorably beyond the line of movie duty. He is diligent, definitely if quietly talented, intelligent about his work; and he has an obvious capacity for study and for growth. Unless he succumbs to boredom, frustration, wealth, or the hideous difficulties of trying to be both a matinee idol and an honest artist, he is certain to become a thoroughly good actor.