An Irishman's Diary

Meeting Gregory Peck, in Paris in 1992, had as little in common with the modern Hollywood star circus as had the man himself

Meeting Gregory Peck, in Paris in 1992, had as little in common with the modern Hollywood star circus as had the man himself. There were no PR handlers watching the clock and dictating the agenda, no tight schedules, no platitudinous hype about current product.

Mr Peck himself opened the door of his suite at the Ritz, ordered coffee and led the way into a chintzy but lavish sitting-room which, he said, had once belonged to Edward and Mrs Simpson.

At 76 his speech was slower than it once was; more gravelly, but still mellow and resonant and with an actor's precise diction. Bearded and grey, he looked a little like Lincoln on Mount Rushmore, but with the deep brown eyes seen in a thousand big-screen close-ups. One hour had been allotted for a newspaper interview; we talked for more than two. He had business coming up in Ireland, home of his ancestors. But inevitably the talk turned to his more than 50 films and the remarkable list of stars who had been his colleagues and friends.

The men he remembered not as icons but as blue-collar craftsmen plying a trade. Bogart, Cagney, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant. "I knew all of those fellas. My recollection is that they were their own men. I think of all of them as workers. They all had their origins in the theatre, as I do, and I think they had their feet on the ground more than the young actors of today. They were somehow not so. . .neurotic, I guess. I think they had more individualistic personalities. They knew who they were."

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John Wayne, he said, was as formidable in person as on screen. The two were political opposites - Peck a Hollywood liberal, Wayne a gung-ho Republican. "In real life he was very much as he was on screen - outspoken, hearty, slapping people on the back. And a pretty good drinker. He used to rib me: 'You're one of those damn pinkos. Why don't you wake up, and die right?' " But, Peck said, he convinced Wayne of the tragedy of the native Americans. "He said, 'My God, you're right. I'm not gonna shoot any more Indians.' And he kept to his word. You remember his last movie, The Shootist - not an Indian in sight."

Peck drew particular pleasure from beating Wayne to the title of Cowboy Star of the Year in 1950, based on his starring role in The Gunfighter as a solitary sheriff in a small town, alone against the bad guys. But if Wayne was miffed, it was another star who had the last laugh. When the studio offered Peck a similar role in another feature shortly afterwards, he feared it would be repetitious. "I felt I'd done it, so I said no." The role went to Gary Cooper, and the film was High Noon. "I don't cry into my beer about it. But it was a big mistake."

In 1959 he was due to make a comedy drama, The Billionaire, co-starring Marilyn Monroe. She was married to Arthur Miller at the time. While Peck and Monroe took a month's tap-dancing lessons in preparation for the shoot, Arthur Miller began rewriting the script. "I started noticing that it was getting less funny, and that there was more and more of Marilyn and less of Gregory." He pulled out. His place was taken by Yves Montand and the film became Let's Make Love. Which Monroe and Montand did. Exit Arthur Miller. And two years later Monroe was dead.

"She has become a myth," he said. "According to all we've read she must have had some misery in her childhood, some hidden wounds. But to meet her? She was delicious - she had a lovely childish smile, a very direct gaze. She was a very sensual girl. I think she had a lot of joy in her - she felt good about being Marilyn Monroe."

From the late 1940s to the early 1970s Gregory Peck played with almost every leading lady: Greer Garson, Ingrid Bergman, Deborah Kerr, Jennifer Jones, Sophia Loren, Lauren Bacall. "They are all extraordinary women, and beautiful. And then when they also have the talent the beauty comes from inside as well."

Who was the most striking leading lady of them all? He had no doubt: Ava Gardner, in The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952). "I think it's not unfair to say that she may have been the most beautiful woman in the world. I know that's saying a lot. But Ava was extraordinary." His wonder was matched by his fascination that he she was always, in her heart, a small-town girl - from Grabtown, North Carolina. "We were both small-town, middle-class Americans and there was a lot in common about our early days, our memories. We always had a rapport." Only a month earlier he had detoured with his wife to lay flowers on her grave.

The most remarkable recollection concerned Fred Astaire. The elegant hoofer had a strange after-hours habit, Peck said. He used to cruise around Los Angeles in police squad cars, a guest of the city force. They would take him round the sleazy streets and alleyways where Astaire, fascinated, gazed out the window at hookers and junkies, the flotsam and debris of city life.

"He loved circulating among the crowds, incognito. He loved that. Occasionally, through connections with the mayor and the police, he would go and visit the morgue.

"Fred had an interest in the darker side of life. I think he was entirely deprived of it as a child - I mean, I've seen pictures of him tap-dancing when he was four."

Peck himself seemed contented with his life and his world. Like the male stars he remembered and respected, like Ava Gardner, he had known both sides of the tracks. His grandmother was Catherine Ashe from Anascaul in west Kerry. His father spent 10 years there as a child.

As we said goodbye, he spoke of the film school that he and Noel Pearson would be launching in UCD a few weeks later. They had become friends when the Irish stormed Hollywood with My Left Foot in 1990.

He believed in putting something back. As John Wayne might have put it, when Gregory Peck finally died earlier this month at the age of 87, he "died right".