Gregory Peck Accepts AFI Life Award

It has become a tradition for winners of the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award to polish off their evening tribute with a speech that provides a personal perspective of their careers, some highlights, anecdotes and some words of appreciation for the joy the industry has given them.

Gregory Peck, who became the 17th recipient of the award Thursday at the Beverly Hilton International Ballroom, did all that, and a little bit more. The tall, silver-haired star gave one of the event’s most eloquent and well-humored speeches, but veered from form long enough to chastise the film and television industries for commercial pandering and urged them to put as much faith in quality and originality as in making money.

Peck, speaking bluntly to an audience he knew included heads of studios and television networks, warned about the corporate buying up of television companies, studios, magazines, newspapers.

“I’d like to hear some glamorous talk about the quality of work,” he said. “Imagination is the priceless resource, and it’s going undervalued.”

Peck also made a couple of references to the 6-year hiatus between his last two films, an apparent retirement that wasn’t his idea. Peck was not even the first choice for “Old Gringo,” which Columbia Pictures will release later this year; he was hired as a last-minute replacement for Burt Lancaster.

Back on the career track, Peck listed William Wellman, Raoul Walsh, Stanley Kramer, Elia Kazan and the other great directors he’s worked with, but stopped just short of giving them credit for his success: “I owe them so much,” he said, adding quickly, “but not everything.”

One by one, Peck’s co-stars stood to praise him, both for his acting and his steady professionalism, and for his commitment to humanitarian causes. Charlton Heston, whose political conservatism is a far distance from Peck’s liberalism, referred to their differences of opinion, but said he respected the commitment.

The most expansive praise came from the women with whom he shared the screen.

“From the moment Greg arrived in Hollywood, he was an event,” said Dorothy McGuire, who co-founded the La Jolla Playhouse with Peck. “Greg came here under the banner of David--(David O. Selznick) and we already had the Duke (John Wayne), Coop (Gary Cooper), Jimmy (Stewart, who was at McGuire’s table). But the serape, the mantle--whatever stardom is--was immediately extended to Greg.”

Half a dozen beauties--from host Audrey Hepburn to best-dressed Angie Dickinson--talked about Peck’s looks, and how great they are. (“Tall, beautiful, gentle, a famous hero,” said Audrey Hepburn.) But looks don’t take you the distance.

What the AFI’s skillfully presented film clips revealed about Peck was his style. True style takes you the distance. Two of his closest male friends were David Niven and Fred Astaire, and Peck belonged in their company.

“Gary Cooper looked me over when I came out here,” Peck told the throng of 1,300. “I told him I’d done two pictures, one good and one bad. And he said, ‘Then you are ahead of the game. Two good pictures out of five keeps the bicycle turning.’ ” Peck illustrated a bicycle turning with his big Captain Ahab arms, then added: “Two out of five for 40 years adds up.”

Not that anyone was counting, particularly. In the audience: actors Kevin Costner, Chevy Chase, Dennis Hopper, Mark Harmon. Executives Mike Medavoy, Alan Ladd Jr., Grant Tinker, Frank Wells, Tom Pollock. Directors Billy Wilder, Arthur Hiller, Leonard Nimoy.

What they got was a surprising sampling of on-screen sexual chemistry. Ingrid Bergman in a bathrobe, eye to eye with Peck, in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound.” Jennifer Jones rubbing food in Peck’s face in “Duel in the Sun.” (“It wasn’t exactly the hardest job I ever had to do,” a red-chiffoned Jones told the room.) Bacall “biting off his ear” in “Designing Woman.”

“He was possibly the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen,” Bacall said, “and when he looks at you, he sees you, he connects with you completely.”

There were romantic clips of Peck with Jean Simmons, Deborah Kerr, Sophia Loren. The kiss that Ava Gardner gave Peck in “Snows of Kilimanjaro” was applauded by the crowd. There was Peck playing drunk to a silent Jane Fonda in a scene from Columbia’s upcoming “Old Gringo.”

“I thought maybe he’d gotten soft,” a rather recharged-looking Fonda said. “He’s part Irish, and that means ups and downs. I thought, ‘Maybe the edge is gone, maybe he phones it in.’ His scene was three pages of emotions on a claustrophobic, smoke-filled set. I saw his tenacity . . . . His fear that maybe he couldn’t do it. But he could. I said to him, ‘Why do we put ourselves through this?’ And he answered, ‘Why not?’ ”

Angie Dickinson, Peck’s co-star in “Captain Newman, M.D.,” was more political than nostalgic: “Universal said I had to sign a long-term contract if I wanted to play Fran. I thought, ‘What could be worth that chunk of my life?’ Then I thought Gregory Peck . And I said, ‘Oh hell--what’s seven years anyway?’ ”

It seemed, at moments, like a seven-hour evening but only because of the preponderance of names. Among those talking: directors and former partners Alan J. Pakula and Robert Mulligan, who made Peck’s Oscar-winner “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Louis Jourdan (“The Paradine Case”), Jimmy Smits, Charlton Heston, Sidney Poitier, Dean Stockwell, who was 9 years old when he played Peck’s son in “Gentleman’s Agreement,” and Anthony Quinn, Peck’s co-star on three occasions (“Guns of Navarone,” “The World in His Arms” and “Behold a Pale Horse”).

“We all wished we looked like Greg, and sounded like him,” Quinn said.

When Peck took the stage, he immediately went to a joke.

“A friend of mine was a sensitive and precise actor named James Mason. James didn’t have a whole lot of jokes, but he told one about walking in the cold in Dublin and being followed by a woman, giggling. “ ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but wouldn’t you be James Mason in his later years?’ ” That’s a nice Irish phrase, ‘later years.’ It’s candid, dispassionate, comfortable.”

It also implied that there were more years to come, said Peck, making the point that previous winners have--that a life achievement award shouldn’t mean a career has ended. It is a recurring irony of these AFI dinners that the legend being celebrated by the industry is often one who can no longer find work in it.