Q&A; : Revisiting a Classic Actor and Film

Alfred Hitchcock once dubbed Gregory Peck “the most anecdoteless man in Hollywood.” But Hitch, it turns out, was dead wrong.

On a recent sunny afternoon, the legendary actor padded around the lavish living room of his sprawling Holmby Hills home offering iced tea. “If you like pictures, and I can tell that you do, you might like to take a look at this one,” he intones with the voice that is part granite, part velvet. He switches the light on a stunning Renoir of red roses. Peck studies the painting as if for the first time. “He (Renoir) was able to be passionate about a bunch of flowers,” he says. “It’s brimming with life.”

As is its owner. At 78, Peck continues to exude the charismatic elegance that was his trademark through films like “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Roman Holiday,” “Spellbound,” “Captain Horatio Hornblower,” “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and 1961’s “The Guns of Navarone,” the action-adventure favorite being revived on the big screen Friday through June 9. The film will be shown with a new 70mm print and remastered soundtracks at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, helping mark the Columbia Classics Festival.

Today, the actor lives amid elegant splendor with his wife of 38 years, Veronique. There are impeccable French antiques and collected works of Picasso, Matisse and Toulouse-Lautrec. But also dropped unapologetically in the middle of the meticulously groomed lawn is a large swing set. “Oh, that’s for Zach,” he says, referring to his 2 1/2-year-old grandson, the youngest of his four grandkids. At the edge of the garden are two large, fake black and white cows. And the cows are for the grandchildren as well? “No,” says Peck, smiling. “They’re for me.”

Recently, Peck broke his rule of never reminiscing as he reflected on his life, his passions and the bygone days of Navarone, not to mention Hollywood.

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Question: In one chilling scene in “The Guns of Navarone,” you have to scale one of the world’s most treacherous mountains. Exactly how was that filmed?

Answer: (Laughs, pointing to a flat surface on the glass table.) I was only crawling up something about that steep. There was a stuntman who did a hard climb on a sheer cliff somewhere, which was intercut with Tony (Quinn) and me faking it, crawling up a papier-mache cliff. We filmed on the Greek island of Rhodes but went to England to do the interior scenes. The studio was not about to have anything tripped up by having two expensive actors climbing a steep cliff.

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Q: What memories do you have of converging on that Greek island?

A: It was a beautiful place. We went off to our locations in the morning. I remember that we had several chess games going because there was a lot of waiting time while they moved the camera over rugged terrain. I would be playing Tony (Quinn), and (Anthony) Quayle would be playing (David) Niven. It was a very congenial group. We actually, I think, all had the sense that it was not a serious war picture.

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Q: Why not?

A: It was a swashbuckler. We were doing impossible things. You don’t want to do it tongue-in-cheek because the audience wants to enjoy the obstacle course. If the Germans are chasing us and we run to the right, they’re going to run to the left. It’s a little bit like Buster Keaton.

I remember, we were filming in the countryside one day and I was thumbing through the script and looking at the stuff we had to do next, and something dawned on me: I wanted to tease (producer and screenwriter) Carl Foreman. So I said: “Carl, you and I both know that this is not about blowing up those guns.” He said: “No? What’s it about?” Then I said: “Niven loves Quayle. Peck loves Quinn. Quayle breaks his leg and has to go to the hospital, Quinn falls in love with a girl (Irene Papas). . . . Niven and Peck catch each other on the rebound and live happily ever after!” He said: “You son of a bitch!” But this is what you call personal relationships--the old love story between strong men.

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Q: That’s certainly a progressive point of view for 1961. In “The Guns of Navarone,” as with so many of your other films, you exude a certain strength, yet underneath is an underlying passion. What are the passions of Gregory Peck today?

A: The passions? The first thing that comes into my head is my family: How are my kids doing? Is my wife happy? Are we happy as a family? Are we moving in a good direction? After that, it would be friends. We still love to travel; our credentials as globetrotters are pretty good.

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Q: What do you think about Hollywood today?

A: So much of the Establishment moviemaking is calculated as really light entertainment, including the violence and the special effects. It is basically light entertainment, extremely well done-- technically. But you don’t carry anything away with you. Maybe you had a couple of hours, like a ride at Magic Mountain, that took you over the hills and rode you around. “Jurassic Park” is maybe the best example of that kind of movie. But the pictures that I have a feeling for are quite different. The most recent ones I liked were “Belle Epoque” and “Like Water for Chocolate.” They are passionate to tell a story that they are in love with and to play those characters.

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Q: The infrastructure and the power in Hollywood have changed over the years. Now we have corporate raiders greenlighting movies instead of the Jack Warners of yesterday. From your perspective, how has that changed the business?

A: Well, it’s obvious that when Darryl Zanuck was calling all of the shots, the pictures reflected his taste and his judgment and his interests. You never had the sense that he was making a picture by committee. You knew that it was Zanuck’s decision. Nowadays, you don’t know who you’re working for. They do all of these test screenings, pushing buttons when they’re interested and when they’re not.

I made a couple of pictures back in 1946 and the last few weeks, their filming overlapped: “The Yearling” and “Duel in the Sun.” They were made for about $4 million. But they were big pictures and those were big budgets. I don’t think Clark Gable ever made over $3,500 a week.

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Q: I’ve heard that you detest the word retire , and yet your last films were “The Old Gringo” in 1989 and a cameo in “Cape Fear” in 1991. What is it going to take to get you to make another picture?

A: Oh, I could be passionate about the right story with the right character. But on the other hand, I am not pining away to jump in front of the cameras just to keep busy.

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Q: What actors in particular would you like to work with?

A: Harrison Ford, Michael Keaton, Tom Hanks, Tommy Lee Jones. . . .

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Q: And actresses?

A: Well, they’re mostly a little young for me! Maybe Jessica Tandy!

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Q: How are you different from your screen persona?

A: I’m not nearly as confident as those hero characters are. Although I think in films like “Twelve O’Clock High” and “The Guns of Navarone,” it seemed to me that I brought in a little ambivalence of character and vulnerability and self-doubt whenever there was an opening for it. But am I like these heroes in real life? No. Sometimes I’ve been courageous and sometimes less so.

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Q: You’ve been offered over a million dollars to write your autobiography and yet you’ve refused to do it.

A: Well, you know (Irving) Lazar was offering everybody a million-dollar advance! But I’m not going to do it. I’m reminiscing quite a bit with you today, but ordinarily I don’t. My dear pal Fred Astaire, he hated nostalgia. He would not talk about the old times or the great days at MGM. He was crabbier than I am. (Laughter.)

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Q: Do you have a guiding philosophy?

A: I’ll answer that indirectly. At a dinner the other night at friends’, a well-known, beautiful lady in her 40s who has had a couple of unsuccessful marriages was saying: “Oh, what should I do to find a man? I want to fall in love.” She said to me: “What do you think?” I said: “Find a man who serves humanity.” She looked at me and said: “What? “ (Laughter.) I said: “I think they are the happiest people--doctors, research scientists, teachers, artists. One way or another you have to serve humanity to be occasionally happy; no one is always happy.”