Gregory Peck

Born: April 5, 1916, La Jolla, California
Died: June 12, 2003 (age 87), Los Angeles, California

Gregory Peck (Eldred Gregory Peck) was an Academy Award-winning and four-time Golden Globe Award-winning American film actor. He was one of 20th Century Fox's most popular film stars, from the 1940s to the 1960s, and played important roles well into the 1990s.

1. Gregory Peck graduated from college the with a BA degree in English. What college did he graduate from?

• University of California, Berkeley
• San Diego State College
• Salem College, Salem, West Virginia

2. Peck's acting abilities were in high demand during World War II, since he was exempt from military service owing to a back injury suffered while receiving dance and movement lessons from Martha Graham as part of his acting training. Twentieth Century Fox claimed he had injured his back while rowing at university, but in Peck's words, "In Hollywood, they didn't think a dance class was macho enough, I guess. I've been trying to straighten out that story for years."

• True or False?

3. Duel in the Sun (1946), when her father is hanged for shooting his wife and her lover, half-breed Pearl Chavez goes to live with distant relatives in Texas. Welcomed by Laura Belle and her elder lawyer son Jesse, she meets with hostility from the ranch-owner himself, wheelchair-bound Senator Jackson McCanles, and with lustful interest from womanizing, unruly younger son Lewt. Almost at once, already existing family tensions are exacerbated by her presence and the way she is physically drawn to Lewt. Who played Senator McCanles?

• Lionel Barrymore
• Walter Huston
• Charles Bickford

4. Yellow Sky (1948) is an American western film directed by William A. Wellman. The story is a Western adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Tempest. It is about a band of outlaws flee after a bank robbery and encounter an old man and his granddaughter in a ghost town. Peck plays the gang’s leader, James "Stretch" Dawson. Who played Constance Mae or 'Mike'?

• Anne Bancroft
• Anne Baxter
• Eva Gabor

5. In this 1958 film, Jim Douglas (Peck) has been relentlessly pursuing the four outlaws who murdered his wife, but finds them in jail about to be hanged. While he waits to witness their execution, they escape; and the townspeople enlist Douglas' aid to recapture them. What is the movie?

6. The Big Country is a 1958 American Western film directed by William Wyler. Peck plays James McKay. He is engaged to Patricia Terrill (Carroll Baker). McKay buys the ranch from Julie Maragon (Jean Simmons). What is the name of the ranch?

• The Big Muddy
• Julie’s Dream
• Home Range

7. Mackenna's Gold tells the story of how the lure of gold corrupts a diverse group of people. Colorado (Omar Sharif) leaves in disgust, believing the gold has been buried beyond reach. In the final scene, a saddlebag on the horse Mackenna took in the mad scramble is shown to be full of gold, as Tibbs (Telly Savalas) had been loading gold in it.

• True or False?

8. Peck won the Academy award with his fifth nomination, playing Atticus Finch, a Depression-era lawyer and widowed father, in a film adaptation of the Harper Lee novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Who made their screen debut in the film?

• Robert Duvall
• Paul Fix
• Adam West

9. Peck moved to television, where he starred in the mini-series The Blue and the Gray. Who did he play?

• Abraham Lincoln
• Jefferson Davis
• Robert E. Lee

10. He served as the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1967, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the American Film Institute from 1967 to 1969, Chairman of the Motion Picture and Television Relief Fund in 1971, and National Chairman of the American Cancer Society in 1966. He was a member of the National Council on the Arts from 1964 to 1966.

• True or False?

11. He in his sleep from cardiorespiratory arrest and bronchial pneumonia at Torrance Memorial Medical Center in Torrance, California. His wife of 48 years was at his side.

• True or False?

12. Where is Gregory Peck buried?

• Woodlawn Cemetery, Santa Monica, California
• Forest Lawn Cemetery, Glendale, California
• Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Los Angeles, California

Answers

1. University of California, Berkeley
2. True
3. Lionel Barrymore
4. Anne Baxter
5. The Bravados
6. The Big Muddy
7. True
8. Robert Duvall
9. Abraham Lincoln
10. True
11. True
12. Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Los Angeles, California
    Plot: Mausoleum