A CONVERSATION WITH GREGORY PECK (1999) B/W & C ~100m dir: Barbara Kopple

interviews w/Gregory Peck, Lauren Bacall, Martin Scorsese & others

From The TCM Viewer's Guide, Now Playing: "If ever an actor has personified plainspoken American decency, it is Gregory Peck. Along with many of his key performances, our tribute includes a rare and intimate look at this living legend of the screen in A Conversation With Gregory Peck (1999), an original TCM documentary that premieres October 18th. Directed by Academy Award-winner Barbara Kopple (Wild Man Blues and Harlan County, U.S.A.), the documentary follows Peck --- still commandingly handsome in his eighties --- as he travels the world and entertains live audiences with a one-man show in which he reminisces about his illustrious career. This career was capped by Peck's Oscar as Best Actor for his performance as Atticus Finch, the Southern lawyer who led his own quiet crusade against injustice in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). Other classic performances for which Peck was Oscar-nominated include the gentle backwoods father in The Yearling (1946) and the empathetic WWII flight commander of Twelve O'Clock High (1949). Born in La Jolla, California, in 1916, Peck entered films in 1944 and quickly proved himself an all-purpose leading man. He was equally at home in romantic comedies (Roman Holiday, 1953) and westerns (The Big Country, 1958), in gritty war films (Pork Chop Hill, 1959) and swashbuckling adventures (The Guns of Navarone, 1961). He has a reputation for being as gallant and self-effacing in real life as he often appears onscreen. Audrey Hepburn, so memorably partnered with Peck in Roman Holiday, once described him as 'the gentlest man I've ever known.'"

This film by renowned documentarian Kopple (whose HARLAN COUNTY, U.S.A. and AMERICAN DREAM won Oscars for Best Documentary Feature in 1976 and 1990, respectively) was recently shown at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival with Peck in attendance.