Peck and Jones

Gregory Peck was born in San Diego, California on April 5, 1916, just over one hundred years ago.  He began his film career in 1944 with Days of Glory.  Over the next five years Peck was nominated for, but failed to win, the Academy Award for Best Actor four times:  1944, The Keys of the Kingdom (lost to Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend), 1946, The Yearling (lost to Frederick March in The Best Years of Our Lives-see post of February 7, 2016), 1947, Gentleman’s Agreement (lost to Ronald Coleman in A Double Life), and 1949, Twelve O’Clock High (lost to Broderick Crawford in All The Kings Men).  In 1962, Peck finally won his Academy Award for To Kill a Mockingbird.  He continued making movies for about the next thirty years.  See my blog post of June 14, 2015 for a critique of his 1965 movie, Mirage.  Gregory Peck died in 2003 at age eighty-seven.      

Jennifer Jones was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on March 2, 1919.  She began her film career in 1943 with The Song of Bernadette, for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress.  In 1944, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the film, Since You Went Away (lost to Ethyl Barrymore in None But the Lonely Heart).  In 1945, Jones was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for the film, Love Letters (lost to Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce).  In 1946, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for the film, Duel in the Sun (lost to Olivia de Havilland in To Each His Own).  In 1955, Jones was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for the film, Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (lost to Anna Magnani in The Rose Tattoo).  She made her last movie in 1974 (The Towering Inferno).  Jennifer Jones died in 2009 at age ninety.      

The Academy Award winning team of Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones made two very good movies together, albeit two very different ones.  The first was the above-mentioned Duel in the Sun in 1946, directed by King Vidor.  The second was ten years later, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, directed by Nunnally Johnson.

In the classic western, Duel in the Sun, Peck portrays Lewt, the younger son of a cattle baron, Senator Jackson McCanles (Lionel Barrymore).  Jones portrays Pearl, the daughter of a cousin of the Senator’s wife, Laura Belle (Lillian Gish), who had been orphaned after her father kills her mother in a jealous rage and is executed for his crime.  Pearl accepts Laura Belle’s invitation to come live with them on their spacious ranch.  However, the Senator resents Pearl because her father and his wife were once sweethearts.

Lewt, “a ladies man,” takes an immediate liking to the very attractive, dark-skinned young woman.  Despite trying to be a “good girl,” Pearl “submits one night to (Lewt’s) aggressive advances.”  She can no longer deny her very strong attraction for him.  However, Lewt won’t marry her because of his father’s objections.  But, Lewt considers Pearl to be “his girl.”

When Pearl accepts a proposal of marriage from an older man, Sam (Charles Bickford), who can offer her security, Lewt murders him and becomes an outlaw.  During this time, Pearl hides Lewt from the sheriff and professes her love for him.  Despite this, Lewt won’t take her with him when he leaves.  Later, he shoots, but doesn’t kill, his own unarmed older brother, Jesse (Joseph Cotton), whom Pearl is fond of.  When she learns that Lewt intends to try to kill Jesse again, Pearl takes matters into her own hands by going after Lewt with a rifle.  In a strange clímax, the two of them, Lewt and Pearl, are conflicted in a true love/hate relationship that can only end with a “duel in the sun.”

In The Man with the Gray Flannel Suit, Peck and Jones portray a happily married couple (Tom and Betsy) who live in suburban Connecticut in the mid-1950s.  While he works in Manhattan as a public relations executive, she stays home caring for their three children.  He feels the pressure of being the breadwinner, trying to balance a career with his family life. 

Tom learns that ten years earlier, when he was a soldier in Italy at the end of World War II, he fathered a child during a brief, but meaningful relationship with Maria (Marisa Pavan), a local woman.  Through an intermediary, she sends Tom a letter asking if he could send her some money to help the child.  Maria truly does not want to cause Tom any trouble.

Tom had kept his affair a secret from his wife for those many years.  But now, he feels it best to be honest with Betsy, especially as she had encouraged Tom to be honest in his professional life.  Of course, at first she becomes very angry.  In a classic female response, Betsy asks Tom:   (a) “Were you in love with her?”, (b) “Was she prettier than I am?”, (c) “Did she have a better figure than I do?”,  (d) “Were you happier when you loved her?”, (e) “Did she love you more than I do?”, and (f) “Do you think of her now when you’re kissing me?”  Then she runs away from Tom and their children and their house.  However, once she calms down, Betsy and Tom reconcile, and they both agree to send Maria a modest amount of money each month to help Tom’s illegitimate child.  The end of this movie is the exact opposite of their previous one.

It is fascinating to me to see these two great actors working together in two very different films ten years apart.  I assume they enjoyed their first experience so much that they jumped at the opportunity to work together again.  Thirty-three years after their last movie together, in 1989, Jennifer Jones made a rare public appearance at the American Film Institute’s (AFI) Life Achievement Award Ceremony honoring Gregory Peck.