Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An acting life, July 10, 2004
Peck's acting life earns a thorough description, movie by movie, director by director. His early life receives a bit less. Born in 1916 in La Jolla, he had a lonely, almost dysfunctional childhood, including boarding schools, distant parents, a favored grandmother, a short-lived dog for a pet, and a University of California education. He quickly moves from college in California, to a scholarship to acting school in New York, to three short, failed Broadway plays, to almost overnight success in Hollywood, kicked off by his role as a priest in "Keys to the Kingdom".But the story is more of a diary or summary of events, including things like profits from his La Jolla Playhouse venture, calculated to the penny. Casts of summer stock plays and Hollywood movies are cataloged. Every radio broadcast seems to merit a mention. But the story is often a bore. Peck, who apparently had some form of editorial input to the book, chimes in at times with one-sentence descriptions of people, events, and movies, but it reads more like a scribbled note he added to the Fishgall's draft text. His life, including children, affairs and failed marriages, are sidelights. If you would like a life catalog, read this book. For entertainment and a more human portrait, watch "Twelve O'Clock High".
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
St. Gregory of Hollywood?, May 13, 2005
Gary Fishgall's GREGORY PECK is an admiring and uncritical look at the actor. Perhaps the only balance is provided by Peck's own words:
"I've had my ups and downs. There have been times when I wanted to quit. Times when I hit the bottle. Girls. Marital problems. I've touched most of the bases."
About those bases, Fishgall is protectively reticent.
However, as a Gregory Peck fan all of my adult life, this bio, while not leading me to more than a superficial understanding of the man, is a comprehensive examination of his life as an actor, first in live theater and then in front of the motion picture cameras. The author's progression through the decades of Gregory's career is methodical almost to a fault. A useful section at the end is a filmography of fifty-three feature films and four television appearances, with the availability of each in either videotape and/or DVD format noted. (The list is perhaps somewhat out of date. For example, MACARTHUR's availability is listed as video only, but a DVD edition now exists.)
Perhaps the highlights of the book were, for me, the trivia revealed. Did you know that Robert Mitchum (co-starring in CAPE FEAR) has a photographic memory and can learn his lines by reading the script just before a scene is shot? Or that while shooting GUNS OF NAVARONE on Rhodes, where, as one journalist put it, "The food is awful, everything shuts up early, and unlike most Greeks, the islanders tether their daughters and let the goats wander free", co-star Anthony Quinn kept the stars from dying of boredom with several portable chess sets brought from home? And best of all, the child star (Harvey Stephens) that played Damien in OMEN literally got the part after demonstrating to director Richard Donner a certain demonic streak - he punched Donner in the gonads.
Fishgall obviously did a lot of research. On page 260, however, he flatly states that California's incumbent Democratic governor, Edmund Brown, won re-election in 1966. Since actor Ronald Reagan was, in fact, the winner - a victory which catapulted him into national political prominence, and eventually led to his election as President - I found the author's factual failure on this small point to be appalling, and perhaps called into question the accuracy of other material in the book. I mean, I wouldn't expect a recent Golden State high school graduate to even know who either Brown or Reagan was, the quality of general education these days being what it is. But should the author of a major, fact-based text make such a gaffe?
Despite its shortcomings, GREGORY PECK satisfied my curiosity about the legendary actor, and then some; I don't think I need to read further. On that basis, 4 stars is appropriate.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Easy Read, September 24, 2005
A nice overview of a popular public figure who is a little more complex than you might expect and not quite the lofty figure of his managed public image, but nevertheless a decent human being, like most of us. The narrative moves nicely including interesting details about the films Peck made and his relations with directors, writers, and fellow actors and the women in his life. An easy read.
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