Gregory Peck

Gregory Peck tried his hand at villainous roles, but he knew he would be best remembered as that most perfect of patriarchs, Atticus Finch. Peck, who won the best-actor Academy Award for playing the noble Atticus in 1962's "To Kill a Mockingbird,'' died Thursday at his Los Angeles home, spokesman Monroe Friedman said. Peck was 87. The actor had not been suffering from any particular ailments, Friedman said, but simply slipped off to sleep and died as his wife held his hand. Late in his career, Peck played such blackhearts as Nazi doctor Josef Mengele in "The Boys From Brazil.'' But the role of the heavy never quite suited him. Friedman said that over the years Peck told him he knew audiences recalled him most fondly for Atticus, the widowed Southern lawyer raising two children amid racial unrest as he defends an innocent black man against charges of raping a white woman. Peck's career was defined by that film, said Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, "because he was the classic, quintessential American hero, a fellow who puts to hazard his whole future in order to do something he believes is right to do.'' Atticus Finch earned Peck his final Hollywood honor, placing No. 1 last week on the American Film Institute's list of top 50 heroes in U.S. movies and beating out such dashing figures as Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones and Sean Connery's James Bond. "I put everything I had into it -- all my feelings and everything I'd learned in 46 years of living, about family life and fathers and children,'' Peck said in 1989. "And my feelings about racial justice and inequality and opportunity.'' Peck's lanky, gaunt-cheeked good looks, measured speech and courtly demeanor quickly established him as star material when he broke into movies in the 1940s. He made his film debut in 1944's "Days of Glory,'' a tale of Russian peasants coping with Nazi occupation. The next year, he played a priest in his second film, "Keys of the Kingdom,'' which brought him his first Oscar nomination. Three more nominations soon followed: For 1946's `"The Yearling,'' the family classic about a boy and his pet fawn; for 1947's best-picture winner "Gentleman's Agreement,'' in which Peck played a reporter posing as a Jew to expose anti-Semitism in America; and for 1949's "Twelve O'Clock High,'' with Peck as a World War II flight leader coming unglued under the pressures of command. His "legacy not only lies in his films, but in the dignified, decent and moral way in which he worked and lived,'' said director Steven Spielberg. "He was the reigning father of the actor.'' Other films included Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound,'' the Ernest Hemingway adaptation "The Snows of Kilimanjaro,'' the corporate-America critique "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit'' and the nuclear-Armageddon tale "On the Beach.'' Peck also played such historical figures as Gen. Douglas MacArthur in "MacArthur,'' Lincoln in the TV miniseries "The Blue and the Gray'' and F. Scott Fitzgerald in "Beloved Infidel.'' Roles became scarce late in his career. He played writer Ambrose Bierce in 1989's "Old Gringo'' and the owner of a company targeted for a hostile takeover in the 1991 Danny DeVito comedy "Other People's Money.'' "It was an honor to know him. It was an honor to have worked with him,'' DeVito said. "He was gentle, sweet and generous.'' Among Peck's final roles were playful revisitations of his past films. He had a small role in the 1998 TV miniseries "Moby Dick,'' for example, as a fire-and-brimstone preacher. Orson Welles had played that role in the 1956 movie version in which Peck starred as Capt. Ahab. Martin Scorsese's 1991 remake of "Cape Fear'' cast Peck and Robert Mitchum in a reversal of the good and evil types they played in the 1962 original. Mitchum, the vengeful ex-con who terrorized Peck and his family in the original, played a sympathetic policeman in the new version, while Peck played the ex-con's vile lawyer in the remake. "He was more than a great man. He was a complete and total gentleman,'' said Polly Bergen, who played Peck's wife in "Cape Fear.'' "One of the dearest I've worked with. He taught me chess between scenes.'' The quiet dignity of his on-screen persona also marked his private life. He divorced amicably from his first wife and was never touched by scandal. "His role as Atticus Finch was slightly ironic for those of us who knew him, in that it was a part in which he only had to play himself, not someone else,'' said Frank Pierson, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Peck served as president of the academy from 1967-70, steering the group into the "vigorous agenda of programming, grant support and preservation work that characterize it today,'' Pierson said. A stage version of "Moby Dick'' lured Peck into acting when he was studying English at the University of California at Berkeley. After college, he moved to New York City, studied drama, did summer stock and made his Broadway debut with the lead in Emlyn Williams' Morning Star.'' In Hollywood, he was soon under non-exclusive contracts to four studios; he refused an exclusive pact with MGM despite Louis B. Mayer's tearful pleading. With most male stars absent in the war, studios desperately needed strong leading men. Peck was exempt from service because of an old back injury. A Roosevelt New Dealer, Peck campaigned for Harry Truman in 1948 "at a time when nobody thought he had a chance to win.'' He continued championing liberal causes, producing an anti-Vietnam War film in 1972, "The Trial of the Catonsville Nine,'' and helped with the successful campaign against the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987. Peck married his first wife, Greta, in 1942 and they had three sons, Jonathan, Stephen and Carey. Jonathan, a TV reporter, committed suicide at age 30. After his divorce in 1954, Peck married Veronique Passani, a Paris reporter. They had two children, Anthony and Cecilia, both actors.