Gregory Peck: A Charmed Life

His first screen test was a disaster, his features were large and irregular and his left ear outsized the right, yet he would one day be headlined as the Most Handsome Man in the World. And most of his leading ladies—among them, Ingrid Bergman in Spellbound, Jennifer Jones in Duel in the Sun, Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, Sophia Loren in Arabesque, Ava Gardner in On the Beach—would not disagree. Nor would Greta Konen, the vivacious hairdresser who in 1942 married a shy, insecure New York stage actor named Gregory Peck. Irreverent, candid, and refreshingly honest, Lynn Haney's carefully researched biography not only charts the remarkable career of the star who took the Oscar for his memorable performance as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, but also plumbs Peck's frequently troubling complexity in his off-screen roles as husband, father, lover, son. For along with Peck's engaging charm and easy generosity came an ingrained stubbornness, explosive temper, and often-melancholy turn of mind. And with his triumphs came heartbreak, personal tragedy, failure, and doubt. This is a story cast with movie moguls, directors, and nearly every major luminary in Hollywood and, starring for the first time in toto, Gregory Peck.