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Rating: 
Summary: An acting life
Review: Peck's acting life earns a thorough description, movie by movie, director by director. His early life receives a bit less. Born in 1916 in La Jolla, he had a lonely, almost dysfunctional childhood, including boarding schools, distant parents, a favored grandmother, a short-lived dog for a pet, and a University of California education. He quickly moves from college in California, to a scholarship to acting school in New York, to three short, failed Broadway plays, to almost overnight success in Hollywood, kicked off by his role as a priest in "Keys to the Kingdom".But the story is more of a diary or summary of events, including things like profits from his La Jolla Playhouse venture, calculated to the penny. Casts of summer stock plays and Hollywood movies are cataloged. Every radio broadcast seems to merit a mention. But the story is often a bore. Peck, who apparently had some form of editorial input to the book, chimes in at times with one-sentence descriptions of people, events, and movies, but it reads more like a scribbled note he added to the Fishgall's draft text. His life, including children, affairs and failed marriages, are sidelights. If you would like a life catalog, read this book. For entertainment and a more human portrait, watch "Twelve O'Clock High".
Rating: 
Summary: A Towering Star
Review: There is a scene in "The Old Gringo" where Gregory Peck as the title character tries to seduce spinsterish Jane Fonda with words words words. (Actually, it turned out he was only softening her up for the young Mexican general Jimmy Smits.)The Old Gringo talks about all the beautiful women he's loved over his long life and how he made them sigh into his mustache. Oh yes, we can believe it! Think of Gregory as the cynical reporter who falls in love with Audrey Hepburn in "Roman Holiday"; or the lewd cowboy Lewt McCandles, who drives Jennifer Jones' Pearl to a "Duel in the Sun"; or the bewildered amnesia patient who makes Ingrid Bergman's cool psychologist fall madly in love in Hitchcock's "Spellbound." I thoroughly enjoyed reading Gary Fishgall's well-researched biography of this towering actor, who is just as decent and intelligent as we always imagined.
Rating:
Summary: A Towering Star
Review: There is a scene in "The Old Gringo" where Gregory Peck as the title character tries to seduce spinsterish Jane Fonda with words words words. (Actually, it turned out he was only softening her up for the young Mexican general Jimmy Smits.)The Old Gringo talks about all the beautiful women he's loved over his long life and how he made them sigh into his mustache. Oh yes, we can believe it! Think of Gregory as the cynical reporter who falls in love with Audrey Hepburn in "Roman Holiday"; or the lewd cowboy Lewt McCandles, who drives Jennifer Jones' Pearl to a "Duel in the Sun"; or the bewildered amnesia patient who makes Ingrid Bergman's cool psychologist fall madly in love in Hitchcock's "Spellbound." I thoroughly enjoyed reading Gary Fishgall's well-researched biography of this towering actor, who is just as decent and intelligent as we always imagined.
Rating: 
Summary: Thorough
Review: This biography is very thorough, especially on Peck's acting career. As for the personal life, Fishgall gives the facts but doesn't delve into any sticky, emotional relationships if, indeed, there were any. The acting career, however, is covered in great detail from the very beginning, so if you're more interested in the actor and the public man than in the inner man, you'll enjoy this book. I did.
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