Gregory Peck : A Charmed Life

"His first screen test was a disaster, his features were large and irregular, 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, Jennifer Jones, Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, and Ava Gardner - would not disagree. Nor would Greta Konen, the vivacious hairdresser who in 1942 married a shy, insecure New York stage actor named Gregory Peck." "Lynn Haney's 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." About the tough times - the soul-searching years abroad, the marital problems, occasional battles with the bottle - Haney minces no words, but the misfortunes by no means eclipse the energy, intensity, and excitement that characterized Peck's five decades of moviemaking. This is a story cast with movie moguls from Louis B. Mayer and David O. Selznick to Darryl Zanuck; with directors from Hitchcock and Walsh to Huston and Wyler, with nearly every other major luminary in Hollywood.