Gregory Peck's brand of strength and goodness was special

By Paul Byrnes
Updated April 9 2016 - 10:13am, first published April 3 2016 - 2:45pm
Gregory Peck stood against all that was stupid and mean in American life when he played small-town lawyer Atticus Finch in <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i>. Photo: Universal
Gregory Peck stood against all that was stupid and mean in American life when he played small-town lawyer Atticus Finch in <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i>. Photo: Universal
Gregory Peck had an affair in 1945 with Ingrid Bergman, his co-star in  Alfred Hitchcock's <i>Spellbound</i>.
Gregory Peck had an affair in 1945 with Ingrid Bergman, his co-star in Alfred Hitchcock's <i>Spellbound</i>.
The hard-won wisdom of Gregory Peck was some distance from the backwoods simplicity of a Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks).  Photo: Supplied
The hard-won wisdom of Gregory Peck was some distance from the backwoods simplicity of a Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks). Photo: Supplied

There's a lot of ugly things in this world, as Gregory Peck said in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), mixing his singular and plural, but he wasn't one of them. Peck was not just one of the greatest actors and stars of his generation, and not just the most beautiful leading man. He was more like an international symbol of goodness, on whom audiences projected their deepest sense of what decency looked like.

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