The Comfort of Gregory Peck

As I suppose others are doing, I've enlivened my sequestration with some comfortable old movies.  My re-viewing of On the Beach for an upcoming post in my Soul of the Future series (not exactly comforting but in a way it is) reminded me of my late 1950s/early 1960s interest in Gregory Peck.

A few of his movies are posted in full on YouTube, including a gorgeous color print of the 1963 movie Captain Newman, M.D.  This was one of the first movies I remember seeing after I'd read the book it was based on--in this case, a Readers Digest Condensed Book version of Leo Rosten's 1961 book of that same title.

The story is about a psychologist at an Army Air Force base in Arizona during World War II (1944 to be specific), evaluating and treating airmen, either to be sent back into the war or sent to further treatment.

The book is based on an actual person, Captain Ralph Greenson.  That today we know the category of  cases he treated as PTSD--post-traumatic stress disorder--is due in part to Greenson's work in World War II.

The film stars Gregory Peck as Captain Newman, Angie Dickinson as his nurse assistant and love interest, and Tony Curtis as the irrepressible orderly, Corporal Leibowitz.  There are several dramatic and effective performances by actors playing patients, notably Eddie Albert, the young Robert Duvall and the singer Bobby Darin, who received an Academy Award nomination as best supporting actor.

Duvall had already made his mark in the movie Gregory Peck is probably best remembered for, To Kill A Mockingbird, though that film may not have been released yet when this one was shot. By the time it was released, however, Peck had won the Best Actor Oscar for Mockingbird.

Tony Curtis had played a similar role to this one in the 1959 Cary Grant comedy Operation Petticoat.  Bobby Darin's role was also very similar to one he'd played on the TV series Hennessey in 1959, his screen acting debut (Jackie Cooper played a Naval base doctor in that series) and in the 1962 film Pressure Point.  By the time he filmed Captain Newman, Darin had award-winning roles in Come September and Too Late Blues.

 Also nominated for an Oscar was the writing team that included Henry and Phoebe Ephron, parents of later filmmaker Nora Ephron.

The real Captain Greenson went on to practice therapy in Los Angeles.  Among his famous patients were Marilyn Monroe--and Tony Curtis.

Leo Rosten was a screenwriter and novelist, and became a close friend of Greenson's.  Greenson was an advocate for empathy, and his influence may be seen in some of the quotations associated with Rosten, such as this one: "The purpose of life is not to be happy at all. It is to be useful, to be honorable. It is to be compassionate. It is to matter, to have it make some difference that you lived."

Besides screenplays Rosten wrote on Jewish subjects.  He was also an ardent Anglophile, lived part time in London, wore British clothes and belonged to London clubs.  Though there is an elaborate and very effective Jewish joke in the film version of Captain Newman, M.D., the Captain himself is never identified as Jewish.  He's the iconic Gregory Peck character.  (However, Peck had already made what many called the first Hollywood film to directly confront anti-Semitism in the 1947 Gentlemen's Agreement.)

Gregory Peck was my favorite film actor in those years, especially for the roles he played and how he embodies them.  He was equally convincing in romantic comedy (Roman Holiday), action movies and dramas.  He played both F. Scott Fitzgerald (in Beloved Infidel) and Ernest Hemingway (or a Hemingway character anyway, in Snows of Kilimanjaro.)   He was Captain Ahab (in Moby Dick) and Captain Horatio Hornblower.  In the mid-60s he made a couple of stylish caper films, Mirage and Arabesque, that also would do me quite well right now.

Part of his screen success was due to the chemistry and good working relationships he had with his costars, such as Audrey Hepburn, Ava Gardner and Sophia Loren. He also became lifelong friends with male co-stars such as David Niven.

He was a second father to Mary Badham, the little girl who played Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird, and they maintained a lifelong relationship.  Author Harper Lee also admired him.  She gave him her father's pocket watch. Peck's daughter named her son Harper.

Another of his films on Youtube is a British production, The Million Dollar Note, in which he plays a destitute American in London. It wasn't outside his own experience--as an acting student in New York he sometimes slept in Central Park. He was a barker at the mythic 1939 New York Worlds Fair.

For me at that early-to-mid 1960s time, Gregory Peck was a model of principle, kindness and thoughtful strength. He made intelligence another form of action. However, I took his strong and silent approach to women in several of his roles a little too literally at times, especially in high school years, since all I could externalize was the silence.