Gregory Peck: A Charmed Life [Hardcover]

Lynn Haney (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 11, 2004

His first screen test was a disaster, his features were large and irregular and his left ear outsized the right, yet he would one day be headlined as the Most Handsome Man in the World. And most of his leading ladies—among them, Ingrid Bergman in Spellbound, Jennifer Jones in Duel in the Sun, Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, Sophia Loren in Arabesque, Ava Gardner in On the Beach—would not disagree. Nor would Greta Konen, the vivacious hairdresser who in 1942 married a shy, insecure New York stage actor named Gregory Peck. Irreverent, candid, and refreshingly honest, Lynn Haney's carefully researched biography not only charts the remarkable career of the star who took the Oscar for his memorable performance as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, but also plumbs Peck's frequently troubling complexity in his off-screen roles as husband, father, lover, son. For along with Peck's engaging charm and easy generosity came an ingrained stubbornness, explosive temper, and often-melancholy turn of mind. And with his triumphs came heartbreak, personal tragedy, failure, and doubt. This is a story cast with movie moguls, directors, and nearly every major luminary in Hollywood and, starring for the first time in toto, Gregory Peck.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Before Peck died in 2003, Haney (Naked at the Feast: A Biography of Josephine Baker) had full access to the actor, who earned his iconic status as a national father figure after portraying the noble and taciturn Atticus Finch in 1962's To Kill a Mockingbird. The ease with which Peck inhabited that role was rare for the actor: his dogged, wooden Method approach sometimes made him the bane of critics and of fellow actors and directors trying to elicit spontaneity from him. Disciplined preparation, however, was Peck's way of compensating for the emotional toll of a peripatetic childhood and absent parents. Method preparation also, Haney says, helped correct for features that seemed "large, irregular and gaunt" up-close. Haney plumbs Peck's own neglectful fathering (Peck blamed himself for his son Jonathan's suicide) and philandering with such co-stars as Ingrid Bergman, who mentored him during the filming of Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945). Peck often projected a stentorian calm on-screen, but in private he apparently required his first wife, Greta, to cater to his "monomania"; he was also a heavy drinker. Haney writes vaguely about Peck's "being repressed," but doesn't satisfactorily investigate how an emotionally stunted actor became a cultural treasure. Haney's insider perspective on Peck—whom she refers to as "Greg" throughout—is marred by a scattershot narrative and flat, workmanlike prose. B&w photos.
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Review

"'He was probably the most beautiful creature l'd ever seen. And when he looks at you, he sees you, he connects with you completely.' - Lauren Bacall" --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; First Edition edition (November 11, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786714735
• ISBN-13: 978-0786714735
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,401,440 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Miss Haney's unauthorized book is a loser, January 15, 2005

By 

Roxie - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gregory Peck: A Charmed Life (Hardcover)

I knew Gregory Peck very well for many years. I also knew his first wife Greta, their sons, Jonathan, Steven and Carey Paul. I was also close to Veronique, his second wife and their family.
Like many of the Peck family friends, I was devestated by Lynn Haney's deliberate misrepresentation of Gregory Peck's personal life.
This unauthorized biography is not worth the paper it's printed on. Hopefully, an authentic biographer will profile with accuracy and respect the life of a great man.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Annoying and poorly researched., May 15, 2008

By 

Keith A. Kjornes - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gregory Peck: A Charmed Life (Paperback)

Gregory Peck is one of my favorites. I actually looked forward to reading this book. However, it is a frustraing mess of typos, errors of fact, bait and switch writing and I'm almost willing to bet, "parts" lifted from other sources, tweaked and used to fill space and take up pages.

The writing "style", what there is of it, changes depending on the subject matter. At different times, when allowing us to follow the story, the author uses "Greg did this", and "then Greg found himself...", which is fine. But on a couple of stories, "Greg" became "Peck found himself" and "Peck did this" and it was like a different writer had penned this sequence. Then, when the "story line" was concluded, it went back to "Greg."

But the most troubling are the simple typos-- ALAN LADD became ALLAN LADD and the movie SAHARA became SHAHARA and a dozen others. References to quotes of people who loved "Greg" in a movie that wouldn't be made for another six years, based on the time line of the "sequence" we were in, was also stumbling.

By the end, I found myself skipping whole pages of dreck just to get back to the "Greg" I wanted to read about. Disappointing and not recommended. But that's just me.

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This writer used my research without giving me full credit, March 3, 2005

By 

John A. O'dowd "John O'Dowd" (Pine Brook, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gregory Peck: A Charmed Life (Hardcover)

As actress Barbara Payton's biographer, I was dismayed to see some of my material on Barbara's life used, without permission or acknowledgment, in Lynn Haney's book. True, she does credit me with the story of Barbara being found unconscious under a dumpster in Hollywood, but some of her other statements about Miss Payton have been lifted directly from my Internet article on Barbara's life and times.

Ms. Haney, I am very easy to get in touch with (my contact information, in fact, appears with the aforementioned article). May I ask WHY you didn't seek me out to ask for permission to use my work in your book on Mr. Peck's life? Believe me, I would have happily granted you permission (with appropriate credit given to me, of course)if you had only taken the time, and care, to ask.

Not good, Ms. Haney. Not good at all!