Gregory Peek attained ultimate stardom as a figure of virtue himself, a steady and honorable man against the corrupting influence of Hollywood. To his publics, his reassuring public front and gentle eyes radiated inner strength and moral conviction. However, Peek had a deep-seated frustration lurking just beneath his controlled public mask. He hated the noise, arrogance, and hypocrisy of Hollywood far more than most of his co-stars ever dare confess. More than once, Peek found himself in the midst of behavior that he deemed
ridiculous and hazardous. There was an actor who showed up for filming with a suitcase containing liquors and no fewer than three live snakes, leading Peek to yell out incredulously that he had never worked in a circus like this. Another actor showed up to the shoot with an actual gun just for the sake of realism, shooting it so loudly that he almost blew out the hearing of the assistant director. PC was furious and frightened as he stormed off, outraged that he had contracted to make movies, not to fight
a war. The number one name on the list of actors Gregory Peek detested was Marlon Brando. Marlon Brando topped the personal no list of Gregory Pek. He epitomized everything Pek detested. This feud started quietly in the middle of the 1970s during the shooting of a western movie in Montana. Gregory Pek had only consented to act in this movie when his associates told him that Brando had finally softened and started behaving like a normal human being. Gregory Pek would be the earliest one on the shooting floor every day with his
scripts labeled, his dialogues rehearsed, and his camera action fully planned. Brando was always very late. He carried an old trunk full of liquor, his favorite three snakes, and his toy piano that he believed aided his acting. On the first day of filming, Brando sat by himself in a corner of the barn set, playing a tonal phrases on the toy piano and mumbled about playing out a scene in blue. The others dismissed it as another Brando quirk, but PC knew they had a problem on their hands from a start. The
actual meltdown occurred during a key dialogue scene. PC was positioned on his mark and ready to deliver his carefully written dialogue when Brando appeared in the frame with a wool hat on and a live pigeon perched in his arms. In mid-cene, Brando let the pigeon fly and began to gaze blissfully at the rafters while ignoring half of what was required for him to say. PC stood frozen as everyone on set witnessed the mayhem. After cut, PC turned and walked off without a word and said later, “This isn’t acting. This
is vandalism.” As time passed, Brando muttered his lines to the point where microphones had to strain to pick them up, but then he would erupt in improvisations that Pek could not possibly decipher. PC felt embarrassed and disrespected. In one particularly contentious gathering, he supposedly blew his top and said, “We are here to make a movie, not attend an exorcism.” Brando simply smiled and said maybe PC’s soul was the one that needed to be exercised. From that point on, in PC’s
estimation, Brando symbolized selfishness and chaos. PC never collaborated with him again. Number two, Frank Sinatra. He was a man whom Pek felt acted like movie making was some sort of fun and easy game rather than a serious art form. He had agreed to work on this war movie being filmed on a back lot in California, expecting order and dedication, and found himself being told simply to orbit around Sinatra’s erratic schedule. He got to the set at 6:00 every morning, all costumed and ready to
work over the scenes in the script. He’d often show up maybe an hour later, still sporting the sense of last night’s nightclub appearance. One day after another delay, PC silently warned the director that if Sinatra appeared drunk again, he would leave the set. The ultimate showdown occurred in a serious infirmary sequence. Pek was totally absorbed in his convincing performance as a doctor when he noticed a faint whistling. P looked down the set and noticed Sinatra leaning against a prop
bed, smuggly whistling. When the cameras turned back on, the disrespect continued. Sinatra spat on the floor, turning to a grip with a smirk, referring to Peek as St. Gregory and rescuing souls for awards. When the director called for Sinatra to concentrate, the singer jerked a thumb toward Caesar’s Palace, saying that he had played there and knew more about feeling than all of the people present. PC replied matterof factly but with conviction that this was not a showplace and that they were not doing an encore
but a story. The set went momentarily silent. From that moment on, Peek maintained a healthy distance, gave his lines and turned his back on Sinatra the moment a scene was finished. Years later, when asked if he would ever again work with Sinatra, he replied that he could act with a chair because it was easier and it called the same time. Number three, Richard Burton. The man who challenged Gregory PC’s soul at a Beverly Hills party in the mid 1960s. Burton did not criticize PC’s talent or
his box office success. He challenged something much more intimate than that, his moral self. PC’s costume for the evening was, as always, subdued. He nodded pleasantly to producers and studio executives. Burton, meanwhile, burst into the party, laughing boisterously, holding a cocktail glass filled with crystals, his voice thundering as if he were still acting before the Old Vic audience. A mutual friend introduced Peek as the man who brought the world Adakus Finch, and Burton’s face changed. He raised a glass
and shouted, “Attakus Finch.” Gregory isn’t an actor. He is a sermon in a tuxedo. The guests burst into laughter. Peek forced a weak smile, but the sting of the insult was considerable. In the months to come, Burton honed the edge of the sword by muttering statements like, “Greg acts like every scene is an address to the United Nations.” In interviews behind his back, he called him St. Gregory, the patron saint of studio morals. It was not idol banter. This wasn’t campaign. The tipping point
occurred in 1965 when a Europeanbacked project offered both of them lead roles. This script preceded Pek by reaching his Los Angeles residence. He allegedly read 20 pages of it before putting it down and telling his agent, “I will play opposite anybody in the world, but not alongside a man who spits on everything I stand for.” Weeks later, the project fell apart. Burton was livid, outraged at what he saw as the hypocrisy of Pec’s self-righteous act in Hollywood. When in fact, the power of his halo had more
influence in Hollywood than all his performances combined. For Peek, this man was more than just a difficult coworker. He was a mirror held up by someone who hated what he saw in the reflection. Quiet discipline, controlled emotion, and the conviction that movies had meaning. Number four, John Wayne. And this conflict came not from a movie set, but from the real world of American politics. Gregory Pek and John Wayne embodied two conflicting visions of America. And in each man, they detested what the other stood for. This
underlying rivalry smoldered throughout the 1960s and would soon manifest publicly. While Wayne, known as Hollywood’s favorite cowboy, strongly supported the war in Vietnam and ultra-conservative causes, Pek, still basking in his success as Attakus Finch into Kill a Mockingbird in 1962, signed protest statements against the war, called for civil rights and promoted causes that Wayne labeled as soft. They talked very little, but that wasn’t necessary. There was one ugly incident at an industry dinner in Hollywood in
the early 1970s at a ballroom in the downtown hotel that faced Wilshshire Boulevard. After absorbing a couple of drinks, Wayne stood up to make an extemporaneous toast. His eyes locked on someone across the room as he snarled. If it was full of men like Gregory Peek, we’d have quit before the first shot was fired. Some people laughed, others squirmed. Peek put down his drink and stood up slowly. He did not yell. Instead, his words were plain. And if this country was filled with men like you, we’d never know what peace is. The
room was silent. The joke was over. The line had been drawn in the sand. Their lives took different turns after that night. When a film studio offered a western project that featured Wayne and Peek as reluctant allies, the project died the moment Wayne laid eyes on the last name of the actor he had to partner. I won’t ride in the same wagon train with that son of an America hater. He allegedly barked. This time there were no punches thrown, no shouting matches, but instead an icy chill that
never melted. When Wayne died in 1979, sources say that he whispered, “I pray for his soul, but I still can’t look him in the eye.” According to Peek, number five, Kirk Douglas, the competition who never ceased to compare. Last on the list, but far from harmless was the intense Douglas, who wo an entire career out of competition with Peek, while Pek was the quieter of the two. Douglas was the loud one. A confrontation was a foregone conclusion, even when the two met only occasionally. In the late
1950s, both of these men were stars. Peek had Roman Holiday and the Guns of Navon on the shelf. Douglas had Spartacus and Paths of Glory. When asked of his peers by other media personalities, Douglas frequently issued subtle jabs against Pek. So when he was asked how he felt about his peers, he just shrugged and said, “Gregory Pek is as stiff as a board. I’d rather break than stand that straight.” This was picked up rapidly within their circle. This animosity was heightened in 1963
when Pek received the Academy Award from To Kill a Mockingbird. So when a crowd stood up to applaud Peek’s achievement, Douglas was reported to have sat down with a drink in hand and mumbled that if Pek was like Attakus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird, then Hollywood is drowning in hypocrisy. The remark was received in turn by Pek within days. There was no official reply from him and suddenly the wall was up years later when Colombia Pictures invited both of these men to appear in the same movie
about the resistance in World War II in Norway. The subtle reading and silent message to the director by Pek was, “I do not want to share the same frame as a man who believes volume is the same as truth.” Douglas was angry and blew his top, saying this one was a hypocrite wearing a halo and that his competitor was the result of studio sheen and publicity. Their feud never rose to the level of shouted matches and public brawls. It was better than that. Two men observing each other’s careers,
calculating success, begrudging to admit the pain that cut deep. Years later, after suffering a stroke, Douglas mellowed and allegedly said, “Greg was the man I resented, envied, and ultimately wanted to be like.” Well, now that you’ve been told what really happened off camera, which of these actors surprised you the most? Let me hear in the comments below. Be sure to hit the like button and subscribe for more of these hidden Hollywood secrets.
