Gregory Peck

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs archive.

Speaker 20:06

This edition may be slightly different from what was actually broadcast, but it is the only version we have. It comes from the British Library's radio collection.

Speaker 20:15

The recording didn't contain the guests' eight music choices, so we've rebuilt the original show by using discs from the B B C Gramophone library. For Wright's reasons we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 20:26

Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Disc's website.

Speaker 20:31

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty.

Speaker 20:34

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:53

This week, our castaway is the actor, Gregory Peck.

Presenter0:57

Is music an important thing in your life, Gregory?

Presenter1:00

Oh yes. I've always loved music, and we have it on more or less constantly. My wife and I have somewhat different tastes. She has her music box and I have mine. But some of the things that I've asked you to play do mean a good deal to me, yes, I do love it very much. Have you ever sung on stage or screen? I once sang in a musical in Summer Rep many years ago, badly. What was it? It was a a Sheridan piece called La Duena, and it was somewhat modernized and it was destined to be a Broadway musical. But it it closed in Cape Cod. But a few years ago I had a notion that I would be just the ticket for the screen version of the Don Quixote piece, The Man of La Mancha. And so I went to a coach and I worked for four months on those songs. Those difficult songs, by the way. And I made a recording and I sent it off to the producer and the director who by that time were in Rome preparing the production. And the message that came back was that I had done quite well for a man who'd never sung before and who'd only studied for four months. But after all they'd found that singer actors made out better in the piece than actor singers. So regretfully they declined my services in The Man of La Mancha. And then of course Peter O'Toole played in and I I've I have great love and affection and respect for Peter O'Toole, but I tell you, here and now, I can sing better than Peter O'Toole. I'm sure that.

Gregory Peck2:39

Ugh.

Presenter2:41

Well, let's have the first record you've chosen for the island. What's that? It's the Beethoven seventh. It's the third movement.

Presenter3:46

The third movement, the presto from the Beethoven Seventh Symphony. Why did you take that? Is so full of life, so full of joy. I often think of the late cutouts of Matisse, the figures that are dancing with the joy of life. I think of that as I listen to that music. Well that record will also remind you of home because it's the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta.

Presenter4:11

You are a Californian by birth, of course? Yes, I come from a little place. It's usually pronounced over here La Jala, but uh by the locals it's pronounced La Hoya because it's a Spanish and of course it's the same

Presenter4:24

J that you find in Jesus. How far back do your American roots go?

Presenter4:30

Well, my grandmother came from County Kerry. My father was born in America, but as his father promptly died, uh an American of English descent by the name of Samuel Peck, my grandmother couldn't make out in the New World, and so she took my father as a as an infant back to Ireland, where he lived for the first ten years of his life in a place called Dingle, County Kerry. And then they made it back again to the States. But as a result of those early years, my father carried the the Irish accent all of his life, and he always referred to me as my son the Philim Star. He of course w w was a pharmacist. Did you have any medical ambition?

Presenter5:13

I did for a while, and I think mm because uh it would have pleased him. Yes. Uh but I wasn't much good at it, I found, and I soon switched over to literature and history and psychology and such things as that. You were in military school and you went to Berkeley. You were a rowing man. You you'd started in San Diego Rowing Club, I believe. Yes, yes. I was l long and lean, and that seemed to suggest that I might be able to pull an oar. Yes. And I did take that up, and I continued uh in in the University of California, where they had very respectable crews. In fact, uh

Gregory Peck5:17

Yeah.

Presenter5:47

Won the Olympic championship twice, not when I was there. But you rode at Poughkeepsie, which I suppose is the equivalent of our Henley. Yes.

Presenter5:56

How did acting come into your life?

Presenter5:59

Well, I uh during the last year of college I was approached on campus. I was striding about uh

Presenter6:06

in my longness and leanness, with my crew sweater with a giant golden C on my chest and the director of the college theater came along and said, I need a tall actor. I have nothing but short actors And uh it was the first time in my life that it ever occurred to me that I might

Gregory Peck6:21

Scott.

Presenter6:31

be on the stage in front of people. It's unusual for a rowing man to double in in theatricals at university. I was the only one that I knew of, yes.

Presenter6:40

But I I don't know why I said yes to him. I had been to some other plays.

Presenter6:45

And I I'd taken note that the girls were pretty and attractive on stage. And something in me, some instinct for play acting, uh playing the game of pretend, appealed to me. I liked doing it and during that final year in university I think I appeared in uh five plays and I wasn't any good in any of them, but I thought I detected a slight improvement. And so when I graduated, having previously thought, well, I might write, I might be a journalist or there might be some form of writing I could handle. But here I had the diploma and uh my mind was not made up. And on an impulse more or less, I took off for New York to become an actor.

Presenter7:31

What did you do for spending money?

Presenter7:33

In college? In New York? Well, in college, I know you'd been a janitor. Yes. What were you in New York?

Gregory Peck7:34

Well

Gregory Peck7:38

What were you in the middle of the morning?

Presenter7:42

In New York I had very little money.

Presenter7:46

But then I didn't know anyone else who had any money either, so we were all quite cosy together. We borrowed from one another. I did odd jobs. I guided tours at Radio City. I was a barker at the World's Fair in 1939. I did a bit of modeling. I'm not proud of that, but I modeled for the mail-order catalogues. I used to get twenty-five dollars a day for leaping in and out of two or three hundred different outfits, from long underwear to overcoats. And none of them fit, but there was a man who was very handy with safety pins behind me all the time, pinning me up so that I could jump in front of the camera and it appeared that the clothes fit me. Other odd jobs, and then I borrowed a good deal, and two very fine ladies who ran a dramatic school well known in New York called the Neighborhood Playhouse, somehow, after I'd done an audition, believed that I might have a future of sorts, and they gave me free tuition. And indeed, when I was really broke, I could always go up and borrow five or ten dollars from them. Oh good for them.

Presenter8:53

Let us break off now for your second record. What have you chosen?

Presenter8:56

Well, uh the prelude to La Traviata is an extraordinarily beautiful piece, I think.

Presenter9:45

The Prelude to Verde's La Traviata, The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. What was your first paid engagement in the theatre?

Presenter9:53

Well, I went to a very strange place in Virginia when I was about twenty two years old.

Presenter9:59

for the summer, and the pay was uh board and room.

Presenter10:04

And the board, such as it was, came in at the box office because it was toward the end of the Depression and the locals were mostly farmers and instead of money they they bartered things that they grew for tickets to the theater, the barter theater. And they actually brought in piglets, quarts of cottage cheese, bales of spinach and whatever it was they were

Gregory Peck10:19

Four tickets to the theater.

Presenter10:31

And that's what we ate, and uh whatever that was there was what we had, and

Presenter10:36

Until you've had spinach and cottage cheese for breakfast for a week at a time, you can't really appreciate what an exotic breakfast that can be. But nevertheless, we did eat and we did work, and I played in ten plays in ten weeks. That was a good experience. Lost weight, but it was a good tryout, good chance to get your feet on the stage in front of an audience. And we weren't very good, but we tried very hard. And what was the first engagement when you were paid in dollar bills rather than spinach? Oh, I finally got a job in a summer theater, I think, in next summer. And it was at a place called Suffering, New York, and I think they paid me $25 a week. And I played bits in supporting roles. I remember playing in The Male Animal with Jose Ferrer and Utah Hagen.

Presenter11:27

I had a line or two

Presenter11:29

and the show that the Royal Shakespeare has revived with such great success once in a lifetime early effort of Kaufmann and Hart

Gregory Peck11:35

Remember

Presenter11:38

Dating about thirty one, I think. We played that. And uh I had a small role in that.

Presenter11:45

You then had about a couple of years with Guthrie McClintock and Catherine Cornell. Yes, I did. They came to see the final audition play at my drama school. That was a custom that agents and producers and professionals would be invited to see the final production of our two-year training course. And the next morning

Presenter12:07

We all gathered by the telephone receptionist back at the school to see if anyone would get a professional call.

Presenter12:15

And uh the phone rang and uh the receptionist uh

Presenter12:18

covered the speaker and nodded at me. Apparently the call was for me.

Presenter12:23

And something was said, and she covered the speaker again and said, Guthrie McClintock wants to see you this morning.

Presenter12:32

Well, I knew where Guthrie McClinnick's office was, because I had been in there and registered and let them know that I was in town and available for work, and it was exactly six blocks from the school.

Presenter12:45

So I took off, and I ran down four flights of stairs, I ran half a block across Forty sixth Street to Sixth Avenue, I ran four blocks up Sixth Avenue to Fiftieth,

Presenter12:56

Dashed into the RKO office building. There was an elevator.

Presenter12:59

Waiting.

Presenter13:01

pressed the button for the eighth floor, shot to the eighth floor, down the hallway.

Presenter13:05

mister McClintock's office door was open. It was a Saturday morning. He was there alone.

Presenter13:10

And I skidded into his office, and he was still talking to her on the phone. And he saw me, and he began to laugh, and he slid right off of his chair onto the floor, still laughing. And when he pulled himself together, he said, You've got the job. Well done. And that was a small part in the doctor's dilemma with Miss Cornell and a nationwide tour. So, again, I was able to get some experience with very, very good people. Yes, indeed.

Gregory Peck13:11

Uh

Presenter13:43

And your first Broadway appearance?

Presenter13:45

It was The Morning Star by Emily Williams.

Presenter13:49

and it had been a success in the West End, and it had to do with the Blitz.

Presenter13:53

And uh it was quite a good play, but the Americans were not yet involved, and uh this kind of sentiment and even the kind of uh humor.

Presenter14:03

Of the Blitz didn't register with the New York audience, so we.

Presenter14:08

We got good reviews and uh even I uh got good reviews, as green as I was. But the play closed after a month, to my regret. You very speedily became a hot property on Broadway. In and in fact you were summoned to Hollywood for a test after your first few plays.

Gregory Peck14:21

Yeah.

Gregory Peck14:25

Uh

Presenter14:26

Well, the test was made in New York, and not in Hollywood, and I don't know why I agreed to do it, because I had absolutely no interest in pictures. I think some agent persuaded me that it couldn't do any real harm, and I might have a look at myself on the screen.

Presenter14:43

But I never did, and I wasn't taken up, and no offer was made, and I forgot about it.

Presenter14:49

And I didn't see that test until about thirty five years later. It turned out to be in the archives of the Selznick estate.

Presenter14:57

and the son of of the late David O. Selznick, Danny Selznick,

Presenter15:01

called me one day and he said, We've discovered an early test of yours. Would you like to look at it? I said, I'm not sure that I would.

Presenter15:07

And he said, Well, we want to dispose of this old stuff, so we'll send it over. And he did.

Presenter15:13

And one day, thirty five years after the fact, I looked at it, and then I knew why I hadn't had any any film offers. It was ghastly.

Gregory Peck15:23

Yeah.

Presenter15:26

There was a time when you turned down an MGM contract.

Presenter15:30

Well, I did later on, yes, Hiva. The LB mayor.

Presenter15:34

wanted me to join his family of stars, and although I'd come round to the idea that I'd like to make films, I was determined not to be in the MGM family of stars, uh to be exclusively signed with anyone, and so I was fortunate enough to witness L B's great crying act, which uh he put on for my benefit in his grief that I I wouldn't join his family of stars and let him look after my career.

Presenter15:59

And he did actually cry and carry on at a great rate. Convincingly? Uh very convincingly. At least I was convinced. But when I left the office with my agent, I said, I haven't seen such a performance since the lunch. And he said, Oh, he does that every day. He loves to be there.

Presenter16:19

What in fact was your first film?

Presenter16:22

It was called Days of Glory, and it was with with the the ballerina Tamara Tumanova.

Presenter16:29

And some one had the bright idea of making a feature film with all unknowns, people who had not been on the screen before.

Presenter16:36

didn't turn out to be a very good idea or a very good film.

Presenter16:40

Your second film, Keys of the Kingdom, for that you were nominated for an Oscar.

Presenter16:45

Which was good going.

Presenter16:48

Well, I played that story with with such utter overwhelming sincerity that it seemed to make and with very little skill, I must say, but it seemed to make an impression on people. I I had not much film technique, but I did believe in the character and in the story and threw myself into it. And I must say I'd enjoyed the whole procedure. And I began to drop my prejudice against film, and I suppose along about that time I began to become less interested in theatre.

Presenter17:24

And that must be so, because after that time, although I did go back once or twice, I did very little theatre. Somehow or other you managed to get yourself signed up to make fourteen pictures, although you had turned on MGM.

Presenter17:37

Well, that was a kind of master stroke of Leland Hayward. He was probably the best known agent in Hollywood, and he had such people as as Garbo and Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotton and uh illustrious clients of that sort. But he was married to Margaret Sullivan, and she took a dim view of his being an agent, and thought that he ought to climb up another rung on the social and theatrical ladder and and become a a respectable Broadway producer instead of a flesh peddler, as she called him. To his face, I believe. And uh so I think it was rather a final uh stroke of uh hyperactivity and the total synthesis of his genius as an agent that he signed me up for fourteen pictures with four different studios and then left town. We'll get Peck bound in chains. Let's have another record. What next? I think we'll have uh Duke Ellington, Satin Dahl.

Gregory Peck18:28

Yeah, that he's

Presenter19:38

The Duke Ellington Orchestra sat in Dahl.

Presenter19:41

Yes, you had fourteen pictures to make.

Presenter19:44

You made two once at one point.

Presenter19:47

Well, they overlapped.

Presenter19:49

The Yearling was a film in which I was a Florida cracker, a backwoods farmer.

Presenter19:58

and Duel in the Sun was a western which mister Selznick had decided to make and as the yielding ran over time and Duel in the Sun was ready to begin, for a few weeks I did find myself bicycling from one studio to another and and switching from my Southern cracker accent

Presenter20:17

To my uh sort of T Texas, Oklahoma twang as a cowboy. One of your early films I remember with pleasure was Spellbound with Ingrid Bergman for Hitchcock. How did you get on with Hitchcock?

Presenter20:30

I got along very well with Hitchcock.

Presenter20:32

People say that he browbeats actors, and he's often quoted as saying, Well,

Presenter20:38

Actors are cattle and when you film use it's a matter of herding the cattle into the corral. The real work is done in the planning stage before we ever go on the floor.

Presenter20:52

But, you know, Hitchcock had a a particular gift for making himself quotable. He knew how to handle the press. Yes. And uh he was fond of saying that. In fact, uh he was uh always considerate and gentle uh with his cattle. I never heard him humiliate an actor ever. You were to work for him again in in the Paradigm case. Yes.

Gregory Peck21:10

You want to work?

Gregory Peck21:17

Had a dynamic.

Presenter21:19

You still kept a foot in the theatre. You you you couldn't get often to New York, so you you brought your own theatre to the west coast.

Presenter21:26

Yes, w uh with a couple of uh cronies, Dorothy McGuire and Mel Ferrer, we began a summer repertory operation down in uh La Jolla, my hometown. They happened to have a nice little theater there.

Presenter21:41

And for six years we went down and we produce all the plays ourselves, and we each appear at least once each summer.

Presenter21:49

And it was quite good. We did quite good work down there. It was a very distinguished production. The opening bill in 1947 was Dear Old Dame May Whitty in Night Must Fall. And she did it extremely well. She played it many times as well. And she played it in London, I think, didn't she? She did. And I remember going to her apartment in Hollywood and telling her our story of beginning a new summer rep in Southern California.

Gregory Peck21:52

Yeah, so very distinguished productions, I'm telling you.

Presenter22:17

And I don't know why, but I guess it was my youthful sincerity and total ignorance. I seemed to appeal to her, and she agreed to come down and do it, and we went on from there.

Presenter22:33

It's time we had another record, number four.

Presenter22:36

Let's have the Symphony No. 40 of Mozart, just because it's Mozart.

Presenter23:38

The opening of the fortieth Mozart Symphony in G minor, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Karl Bohr. You were collecting a number of Oscar nominations. You got that first one for the Keys of the Kingdom, then another for Gentleman's Agreement, and yet another for an adult war film you made, Twelve O'Clock High, which created quite an impact.

Presenter24:02

But you get no credit at all for turning down high noon. Now how did that happen?

Presenter24:08

It was a mistake in judgment on my part. I I had made a film called The Gunfighter, which even today remains one of my favorites.

Presenter24:17

And several weeks later a producer by the name of Stanley Kramer sent me the script of High Noon.

Presenter24:24

And I uh I recognized that it was a fine script, there was no doubt about that.

Presenter24:30

But in my mistaken sense of youthful idealism I thought, well, I didn't want to repeat. It had to do with the traditional loner who faces the whole town alone and puts his life on the line for what he considers to be what's right and

Presenter24:51

I thought, well, it's they're too much alike and I would like to be versatile. That was a great mistake, because I did turn it down, and Gary Cooper immediately accepted when it was offered, and went on to do it with enormous success, and won the Oscar doing it as well he should, because he was uh perfect in it. I doubt that I would have been nearly as good. I could have played the role, but uh no one could have played it any better than Gary Cooper played it. Have you enjoyed Weston's?

Presenter25:18

I did up to a point.

Presenter25:20

I made ten or twelve and

Presenter25:23

And, believe it or not, back in nineteen fifty I was voted the Outstanding Western Star of the Year.

Presenter25:29

And I think somewhere in my basement I have a pair of silver spurs to prove it. But I didn't want to go on and on doing that. They don't talk much, for one thing. They're always taciturn and uh

Presenter25:43

They haven't much to say and uh for good reason because most of those Western characters were only semi-educated and uh they weren't very conversational. And it gets a bit monotonous to be out somewhere in let's say Gallup, New Mexico, and have two or three lines to say a week. But you en you you enjoy writing, you you like all of that. I like the ho the writing part of it. That was that's always been part of my life. And I do like the form. It's a it's a classic American film form.

Presenter26:13

But I think it's a bit out of style now. At least uh maybe the cycle will come round again. I hope so.

Gregory Peck26:19

The map.

Presenter26:20

You've made several good sea stories. Captain Horatio Hornblower, RN, was an excellent fellow.

Presenter26:26

Yes, I I enjoyed making that. That was my first film in England, by the way. Was it? Back in uh nineteen fifty out at Denham with the great Raoul Walsh uh directing.

Presenter26:36

And Moby Dick, there's a terrifying story in a book which has been written about you by Michael Friedland with the explanatory title Gregory Peck about you being adrift on a rubber whale.

Presenter26:49

Well, it's true enough. We were attempting to film Ahab in the last throes on the back of the great white whale, entangled in the ropes of many harpoons that had been plunged into this beast. And the whale was actually eighty five feet long. It was made of some rubberized material. It was it was a kind of a dirty gray white. Underneath was the hull of an old uh potato schooner, I believe.

Presenter27:22

and the tow rope broke in a sudden gale that blew up, and sudden seas the waves were perhaps twelve, fourteen feet high, and the fog rolled in, and suddenly I was alone Moby Dick and I were alone in the Irish Sea.

Presenter27:38

And it was rather dicey there. How far off the coast?

Gregory Peck27:40

Yeah.

Presenter27:41

We were eight or nine miles out, and it was so foggy that I had I I had no idea which way to swim, whether to swim for Ireland or for Wales.

Presenter27:50

and I was slippery there, didn't have a very good hold on him.

Presenter27:54

and it did actually cross my mind that I might die there.

Presenter27:57

And I began to get a queasy feeling in the stomach and uh a kind of lassitude, which I'm told comes along with with physical fear, began to overtake me. But then the thought uh of the headlines really overcame the fear. Movie actor dies on rubber whale in Irish Sea.

Presenter28:18

Yes. And so I began to shout and to yell and finally I attracted the the the from the sound of my voice they were able to find their way through the fog to the whale and I gratefully slid down the side of the whale into a motor launch. That was a very horrible experience. Let's uh have some more music. This is uh Peverotti. Uh your tiny hand is frozen. The remarkable aria from uh Puccini's La Boem.

Gregory Peck28:32

The very hot

Speaker 328:56

For one pleasure

Speaker 329:27

Yes, yes.

Speaker 329:28

Yeah.

Speaker 329:32

Hard by a fool.

Presenter29:42

Ucciano Pavarotti, Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen from La Boem.

Presenter29:49

Another film of yours, Gregory, that looked highly dangerous was The Guns of Navarone. Was that risky?

Presenter29:54

Now and then you have a narrow escape or a little brush with danger. I've I've broken the leg in the process of making a Western film and I've wrenched this and that. But for a very good and practical reason our doubles do most of the really dangerous things because uh can't have a seven million dollar film and have your star uh sent off to the hospital or to the mortuary in the middle of it. So uh actually we face very little real danger. But uh Guns of Navarron was a good rousing

Gregory Peck30:21

Mm-hmm.

Presenter30:28

adventure film, one of the ones that I enjoyed making and enjoyed watching and I think people still do.

Presenter30:33

At long last, after all those nominations, you did get your Oscar for a film called To Kill a Mockingbird. What was the part? There's one I didn't see.

Presenter30:42

It's a very American story, and it's a small-town Southern lawyer, a widower with two children, the only lawyer in town, and he risks his uh standing in the community and even in a way his safety and that of his children by defending a black man falsely accused of rape.

Presenter31:03

And in the early thirties it was uh I'm sorry to say

Presenter31:08

Totally impossible. Unknown.

Presenter31:11

for a black man to be acquitted on such a charge. But I did give him a spirited defence, and although he was found guilty, it was a dramatic trial and a dramatic story, and there was one marvelous moment, I think, that uh I always enjoyed, and I was leaving the courtroom after having lost the case.

Presenter31:37

and my two children were in the gallery where the black people sat and watched.

Presenter31:43

And as I left and gathered my portfolio together and walked down the main centre aisle of the courtroom by myself, a black man in the uh in the gallery said to my two children, Stand up, children, your father's passing. And that was a nice moment. A very nice moment.

Presenter32:02

You set up a production company yourself, d did you enjoy handling that side of things?

Presenter32:07

Not much. I found that to produce a film takes about a year out of your life. I enjoyed the creative side of it, working with the writers, working with the editors, working with the director and the actors. But the business side, what they call the below-the-line side, I found terribly boring, long, long days in the office and I missed the excitement of being on the floor with the camera and the crew and the actors. So I produced a couple of films, not particularly successful, and was off the screen for three years and then I decided I'd rather get back where the real fun is.

Gregory Peck32:25

Yeah.

Presenter32:48

Let's have some more music. Number six we've got to

Presenter32:51

We have the first movement of Beethoven's violin concerto with the redoubtable Isaac Stern.

Presenter33:55

An excerpt from the first movement of the Beethoven Violin Concerto, Isaac Stern, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

Presenter34:04

These days

Presenter34:05

A film actor is a is a gipsy. There's very little studio work any more. You go to the actual location. You've done a fair amount of globetrotting.

Presenter34:13

Indeed I have. This this recent film was done in Goa. The Sea Wolves. The Sea Wolves, indeed. I I never thought I'd be in Goa, but I found myself in Goa for eleven weeks and I enjoyed it very much. Yes, it is. I filmed in Ceylon, in Taiwan, in Ecuador, Mexico.

Gregory Peck34:18

Emo

Gregory Peck34:24

Yeah.

Gregory Peck34:27

Yes it

Presenter34:33

Most everywhere. Yes, all expenses paid. Well, going back to the Sea Wolves, which I enjoyed mightily, a lot of old sweats in it, David Niven, Trevor Howard. And a a true story, of course. It is a true story.

Presenter34:46

Based on a little-known exploit, uh

Presenter34:48

The British put a German transmitter out of commission in Neutral Goa back in'forty three.

Presenter34:55

And that story was never told because of the sensitivity of the Portuguese. Well

Presenter35:01

That had to be done. We had to win that war, certainly.

Presenter35:04

and the German U boats were sinking Allied cargo vessels right and left.

Presenter35:09

because of this hidden radio transmitter which was giving them pinpoint accurate information. Uh couldn't send in the marines or the air force. It was determined that we'd send in a group of civilians. And they were an overage group, a club from Calcutta called the Calcutta Light Horse, named after a a one-time active regiment in the Boer War.

Presenter35:33

So these uh middle-aged types were only too eager to get into it and do their bit, and they trained up a bit and shaped up a bit and went and did this in a in a rather clumsy and uh sometimes comical fashion, still pulled off this commando raid, and it's quite a nice story, I think, and it's all true. And Mountbatten himself knew of it and was glad that the information finally

Presenter35:58

could be released and that these old chaps could get some of the credit for that deed. I admired your British accent. You were almost the most British thing in the picture. I worried about that just a bit. What are your future plans, Gregory? What have you got in the book?

Gregory Peck36:06

Worried about that just a bit.

Presenter36:13

Well, I don't work as much as I used to. I spend a great deal of time in my garden, which I love dearly. I have a number of children I'm interested in, and I follow their comings and goings with great interest. But I do like to make about a picture a year. And there are two that are on the back burner, that are in the writing stage and the financing stage. One quite different from the other, and I think one or the other will probably get in front of the cameras about next winter.

Presenter36:43

and I hope they take you to some good locations.

Presenter36:46

Record number seven.

Presenter36:48

This is uh Arthur Rubinstein, uh Chopin, the Fantasy Impromptu.

Presenter37:42

Chopin's Phantasy Impromptu in Seashore Minor, played by Arthur Rubenstein. Now to a man who's been adrift on a rubber whale, a desert island must seem pretty humdrum.

Presenter37:54

Could you manage? Are you a handyman? Well, I'm handy around the garden, and that's the only way that's the only manual skill that I have.

Presenter38:03

This desert island of yours, it I presume that edible things grow there. There's everything there that you need if you find out how to handle it all. Could you put up a shelter?

Presenter38:13

I think I could manage that. Small craft? Do you know anything about it?

Presenter38:18

Is there one?

Gregory Peck38:18

Uh Designer.

Presenter38:19

No, you'd have to make a raft or something of the sort. Uh-huh. Would you try to escape, or would you sit it out? I think I'd sit it out. I don't blame you.

Gregory Peck38:21

Okay, so

Gregory Peck38:26

I do

Presenter38:28

Not much confidence in my n navigational abilities. No, I think I'd sit it out.

Presenter38:33

What else am I allowed to have there?

Presenter38:35

My wife, no. No, no, you're on your own. No, no pets? No. Books. Well, I'm going to offer you one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare and big encyclopedias. Well, I think I'd choose Sandberg's Lincoln. It's not one book, it's six books. It's a good read. The first two are the prairie years, obviously the boyhood and youth of Lincoln. And the last four are the war years, having to do with his Presidency and the Civil War. And I'm a Civil War buff and a Lincoln buff. And I find uh those books endlessly fascinating, and I often do pick them up.

Gregory Peck38:38

No, you're on your

Gregory Peck38:54

Hungry.

Presenter39:16

and not only do I enjoy them,

Presenter39:19

But uh th on nights when I'm troubled by insomnia, after a half hour or so of Lincoln or the Civil War, invariably I I doze off. So that there's a double purpose there. That's good.

Presenter39:32

Let's have your last record. You've got one more disc to choose. Well, my last three have been chosen because they're all by I'm happy to say and proud to say by friends of mine, Isaac Stern and Arthur Rubinstein, and particularly Mr. Sinatran. I've chosen uh his version of New York, New York, and I think it's quite remarkably uh energetic and uh uh I think he's taken over this song and

Presenter40:01

and made it his own.

Presenter40:03

And he and I are contemporaries. I've known him since he was a skinny nightclub singer in 1941 in New York. And I was a brand new actor in town. We met at that time. And I just think that he puts this song across with all of the energy and the gusto and the spirit of American popular music at its best.

Presenter40:32

I'm leaving today.

Presenter40:36

Uh

Speaker 340:36

One, two.

Presenter40:37

Uh

Speaker 340:38

Be a part of it.

Speaker 340:41

New York, New York.

Presenter40:44

These vagabond shoes

Presenter40:49

Our longings astray.

Presenter40:54

Right through the very heart of it. Frank Sinacher, New York, New York. If you could choose just one disc out of your eight.

Presenter41:04

I didn't know you were going to do that to me. You've lost seven. I'll take the Beethoven Seventh Symphony. The Beethoven Seventh Symphony. And one luxury to have with you. Nothing of any practical use, something to enjoy.

Presenter41:17

Not Sophia Lorraine.

Presenter41:19

I'm afraid it has to be inanimate.

Presenter41:22

Well

Presenter41:24

I would think of a packet of seeds so that I could garden, which is my only real skill that I have. And I'd also think of perhaps a crate of uh La Fitte Roschill sixty-seven if you could throw in a nice Brie. Do you think you could manage that? Uh well, yes, just a taste of Brie might be in in the case. We'll give you more than one case. Will you? Yes, you might be there for quite a while.

Presenter41:49

Oh, that would make life very agreeable. Then I'll take the Lafitte Rotchille. Right. And thank you, Gregory Peck, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Presenter41:58

Thank you. And as the sun sets, I'd like to say I've enjoyed being on your desert island very much. Thank you. Goodbye. Bye, everyone.

Gregory Peck42:06

Compliance.

Speaker 242:16

You've been listening to a download from the Desert Island Discs archive.

Speaker 242:20

For more downloads, please visit the Radio4 website.