*Page
MY LIFE STORY
I'
By
THE CHINA? MAIL ¦ SATURDAY, NOVEMBER (14', 1953.
GREGORY
the University of California, Blen Busting-a-12ft. dory, 18 the girl, she was one of God's was quite a ship, although
to modify our would wits to mankind. She never knew we had
that her very interest in my future ideas rbout spus aku
would have ende any difference.
did the thing property.
"F it hadn't been for a woman
never have made Hollywood. I might was purting me out of her life, make do with a latce
docft think it Young as we were, we still have been à San Diego oil-truck and if she had driver humping drums of oil and groase Affero lo universer First, we saved the tim- into filling-stations ten hours a day for £10 got carer and rarer. But I shall ber into lengths, warped a week.
I quite liked I was 18. I
drifted slowly apart. fetters
never forget that it was Betty, my fast sweetheart, who literally kicked me in the panis, out of a 20 dollars a week truck driving job, into university, and bn the
the big money.
*
PECK
the boards, and Built according to the pericllled pléh ́öf-an bid boatbuilder, Wood, far, t hemp cost us about $19, .
we, bought this out of our and some we corned by etinning I sow Betty not long ago. She errands.
And I don't get any falso ideas about it. the job. I was a mighty fine truck driver. had just failed to make the grade to get into university, way to Browny, Hollywood, ana pocket money, 20 ekhts a week, plaillet, but there was no theatre ductions of peetod future.
and I wanted monoy.
The truck job paid well enough to lot me buy a jalopys happily married and has a and I had a lot of fun tunning around the Californian lovely frmily. But she frowns at countryside in my spare time. And there were prospects my success car the films. She still The big guy at the depot thought I was good. He visages me as the docter, the said: "Son, you're doing all right. Stick in and one day faw in he boy steel engineer the haw in the boy nineteen years ago you'll get a gold watch like me for 25 years' service, and in the old frame house in San be earning $300 a month." That sounds funny now as Diego. I write this at a Louis Quinze table in a £50 a week Puris hotel suite. In front of me is the prospectus of my own oil company.
But it was a prospect 19 years ago when I was 18. I slaved at the job. I had about 40 customers to serve. Every quarter of a mile or so I used to find my next cus- tomer and dump a drum of oil or grease or both. Every day I had to go back to the depot to reload to finish the round..
I took about $6,000 a day. Each evening before I Anished I had to make out my report and cash in. You not promotion on the quality of your reports. Mine were Watch" good. Old "Gold sald so.
Boyhood Thrills
th. In La Jolla I did pull up there wasn't any palm that I can a meal.
Temember.
still like the bungalow Nobody in the Peck household Is pb of house, and my $50,000 Imagined my going on to the home in Hollywood a low. stege, Mether is an necomplished trembling plase filled with repro- in my background. Dad Is
nuchber, on A only, has quiet, conservative type. He had boulevard. the idea that I might become # doctor or follow him 03 A chemist, and I suppose that I accepted the idea gradually.
When 1 Was struggling
through the early days a young actor, Daituted fa advise ine to throw it all up
steady job, and take.
Took Pies
WHEN grandmother died 12
work! lost a wonderful cook
mo
years ago, aged 92, the
and I misted a grand per- "Gibb up this acting business oh. Her influence on he told me. If you don't you' in these carly years probably be coming to me when you're 35 the moulding of Cregory had more than anything else to reski
JOHNNIE and I worked, often by the aid el Hashtamps, hammiering the nails and caulk ing the scans, and then one day Not many people know that 1 the whole gang carried, it down was christened Eldred Gregery to the sun and pushed it in. 11 Peck when I was born 37 years floated upright! We hoisted ago at La Jolla, a invely littlo suit and the warm summer to borr w ten dollars." Californian seaside resort about breeze filled the lateen, and twe ten miles north of San Diego. small boys, bursting with pritte. never got on with "Eldred and to the shouts of most of nineteen and young La Jolla, sailed the craft signing the register ni univer- round the bay and back again. sity, witched my Christian Unfortunately The Daisy, as
and when I was
nines and conveniently forgot we called her, had a short life.
. I remindex lm of this gently
the other day when he came over to Britain to lock up the Kerry side of the family.
"Well, anyway," he said, "I'll give you a beating at golf."
I Was Happy As A Truck Driver
But
A Girl Made Me Study
Then I of Belly She was in the easlest chair. But Belty, and lovely rant of a tutor, would dark-haired, blue-eye: pretty. She was my first serious say: "Come an, Grog; let's hit the And so, in the living- date. Betty liked the ok jalopy books" rides, but the hnd renbitions for room, with the others chattering
around, or in the kitchen scene me that I never thought about.
a bit of peace, I would times, for "Greg." she would say, "why bone up on modern European don't you up out of it. You're history, sociology, or my most too good to be just a truck driver, hated subjects, physics. Why don't you try for the unive:- sky?"
"Eldred " Anyway, people have always cutled me "Greg."
The Peek part of the nanic 15 also quite genuine. Dad, a tall, bushy-eyebrowed Irish-Amerl- sin, belleves his forebears came from Peckham, London, Grand- mother on the paternal side came from County Kerry,
Life' at La Jolla (it means the jewel" and it rhymes with
hoya") was
a sheer deight for
a youngster, Our trama house, which Dad had had built New York to set up as a family, woll. Her Mum and There sessions often went on druggist in the carly. 1900s, was
people unil the early hours of the quite close to grand
house
morning at sometimes we were carliest ambition still fighting question and anmee boot-builder. when down broke and we could
wish off the light.
It Paid Off
While others were necking on the back porches Betty and I dissected Balkan dynasties, and mugged up nathentics. Often I began to nad off to sleep. Betty would shake me out of it, put me up sige black coffee:** ~
Heavy seas tere her from the beach one night and pounded the dory to pieces.
And he can too. He plays in the eighties and I find it hard to best the hundred.
Dut there
was a lot of cold
She was a short, stout and poppy perech with live hair and bright eyes. She was the fastest cooker of doughnuts I have ever known.
"fungry?" she would syk when I come running in from the sea- -Phore to wring the salt out of my
Bathing flip and shake it out of iny hair.
In 15 minutes I was woling a plate of doughnuts. She
wa a tast worker und 60 WIG. 1. was a thin Her
special dish pencake
with home-made maple
told mo syrup. She that one day I polished off 50 a sitting. I stil! pancakes at love doughnuts, pancakes, and waffles, but they don't taste the stune as grandinother's.
The film star with no illusions
Round about 12 I had a pas-
ΤΟ
A
a
1:
in
And I read books greedily. 1. borrow, the old man's Nash and hated to get to the end of such load it up with Easter,illes, stories as King Arthure, Robin bouquets, and wreatha to be Hood, Tom Sawyer, Treasure delivered to the customers. Dau Island, Robinson Crusoe, etc. I didn't Imow, it but he also paid dramatised them as nowadays 1. for the gasoline. dramatise my scripts.
+ got my twelve dollars and wont for my ten lessons. My horror found that slon for the Tom Swift stories. the dancing tutor He was the boy, genius, perfect man and we had to dance in everything-lootball, setence. to
gramophono music invention, and who always mad a large studio. Disillusioned and the winning bit at, ball games,
Of course, I read Zane Grey: must have made progress be- disappointed though I was, 'I then I got to like Scott, Jane cause I got a receipt for my Woman's Exchange Austen, and the Brentes, This
love of good books stays with twelve dollars which said that I me to this day.
could now dance!
A few girls at
the prom, those days
I am on the millik ust for might have had other iets but Out of every live who go on TN La Jolla in
2 didn't. there was a Womih's E- the stage only one
care because I was in is playing.
hope no one thikanë, pig be actors don't inuke the grade, ed a couple of dozen fresh to when I say that I usually do on affair. She was one
of the dozen eggs, she to the set with a slim volume of pupils at the school, a pretty, There are a lot of broken hearts matory, or a
to the ex Dostoievsky, ΟΙ somo chey (Mrk girl. on the way to Broadway, and would take along
her legion classic author, in my pockel to one of many disappointed souls wash- change ing. dishes in Hollywood. meringues and swap it. One read during the boring, interva's
of my errands was to cafry Between shots." these cakes to the exchange: for grandmother.
common sense in what my old
one realiso in teld me: No better than I do that I have bany
That was the end of the Peck thipyard, but there was a lot of fun on the La della bench while
schoolhouse. It is an exciting fortunate. I remained at the little wooden coastline. Small cliffs, deep caves, rocks and rock pools, Sum-
and is of golden sand.
mer stays from May to October, Ninty-nine out of a 100 would thangë, it grandmother want all the modern libvels, and the throes of nly Brat bilet love
and it is often warm enough to bathe at Christmas.
I could
CHE Kind,of wore, on me with in the hardest chair, and brew when he came to La Jolla from four.
Day
the idea.
were
}
her knew
and they held. open for the young foilt I was great chant with Betty's brother..!
Then began one of the most curtois of courtships. ten hours with the Musk. 1'3 want to put my feet up and rest
After
I paid cff, as Betty said would, and got my entrance to
the
sen. My was to
be a
1 did build 1 bogt, toc when i was ine. The boy next
door, Johnnie Buchanah, and
sumber con- spent one whole
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swim when I was One of on sports was fhing for abalone, a big clam strongly to rocks. We used to like shell fish which adheres dive down to the rocks armed with a motor tyre Jover with
und
My advice to any mother who wants to put her daughter on the stage is, like that of the
í At the moment 1 Vari real- Ing the Idiot." Like Dickens,
1 need hardly tell you the the Russian has a wonderful
12 Brothers
TAM sorry. I forget her rama,
wrench the large shells from song, "Don't, Mro Worthington rest. Imaglue a small boy and power, of charact:Puution hou ↑ 1 Best I-shrill Never forget, the
We imagined thelr anchorage. we were pearl divers. In fact, the inside of the sintone shell
as
is covered. In insther-of-pearl, and the shells are valued decorations. enting, fco:
The fish is good
We made lobster traps from
that in iinless there ; 19 obvicus talent in her, and you are prepared even then to see her break, her heart."
Sporting Family
Dancing Lessons
a plateful V{"ho bless and a and fis slut stintuating, **
Exchange. long walk lo the The temptation was often tos great. First ore ple vanished, theh another, and when I re- turned home and grandmother counted the tomatoes, she would fix me with thiose bright eyes and say: "Eldred lenn over that chait
For some years I wore (9), Stephien (7), and Carey
school tunle blue-grey (4). They're too young yet for me to think what they ure Breechies and shiny peaked cap Today Reute roid
the St. John's Military to be, but I shall not of going
Academy at 1
Los Angeles. I had 1801. stand in their way whatever
110W returned to my father's they want to do.
orange crates, und We fished for I'VE got three boys, Johnathan anything and everything with I
our hand lines.
I go back to La Jolla every summer to put on a scuson of plays at my theatre. Every day I-win-there I catch fish and abalone. But my world has ex- panded so much now that I can never recophire the Boyhood thrill of an adventure in every plunge, or discover a great new world in a rock pool, or find again the fear of a dark cave lapped by the waves.
Suntanned Boy
NOT
Maybe one will want to actor. I'll confess I've a meaking desire to see one of them pitching to win for the Yankees at the Yankee Stadium. Sill!....
There's a lot of spert in the rocks. Dad was a star basketball player at Michigan University and nonowed in the pickle beat at Poughkeepsie. that....is another story.
ely parents were divorced when [OT very long ago 1 was
Elumally trying to My-fên in 4 was three, eed for reven years expensive. stretch of water in I lived with my grandmother in Hampshire. I had with me the a nice od frame house card costilest equipment, the latest in "The Dewdrop." fly
ds, and the most clegant
The people of La Jolla had a "What's nie datter, reassion to mething their honer,
was born in a to o mi" which asked my host. "Dreaming" Indian means "Welcome." It
"I am
afraid I am," I told was a brown woollen bungalow him, "dreaming of a very small with a white strip of painit just suntanned boy catching his first under the roet and a white sleze fish with a piece of string and a chimney. borrowed cod book."
I drowned my fles in the
Another of my early homes wes Hampshire stream and caught no called "The Silver Palm," but
GLUBB PASHA
HERE is an och Fift
between Jordan's Pre-
mier, Dr Fawzie el-
Which
hothes."
the and
F
*
„rézéption" committee when
1
are ved at her. house carrying the Invitation card and the custorh- nry, corsage. There, the up to give me the once-over, were her 12 brothers,
WAS quile a small chap when
I went to San Diego High I graduated from High School School ut-14.
I barely reached with an insuficient pass to get ST. 4in. But in
Matlie two years. 1
into university. hot up to my present height of maties, which, I heartily detest- Bft. 3. d weighed 1951. ed, and still do, let me down,
about At school I always td well he
the subjects. I liked, stich, as English, and I still; thought of This rapid growth during my myself as something of a writer, cure. Here I was Laught by adolescence-played-invoc with the Slaters of Mercy We
my sport and I did hardly any but I had more or less made up drited every day with wooden thing worth while at games al- my mind to become a doctor. rifles and we got medals for though I began to fancy, myself proficiency.
Love Good Books
as an oarsmen,"
I went to San Diego State Col- cge for, what you would call a cramming course to qualify for university entry
́ ́but I didn't
I also learned to dance? In my last year at High School I wanted to go to the schilor stick it long. I wanted to get prom; quite the rocial event of cut into the world and car the
I wanted to travel to But I was money..
can
then I saw dance like Jessons, 12
GOT my share of these, but in awkward, lar
an · lanky sort of meet people, to see the world. my interest was sport, and fellow and I couldn't dance a So I quit school. I became "a. although I was never top stop. I felt cd strongly about truck driver. I bought a Ford
incr, always third best, I this lack of social grace that I fondster... and 'theh
I met thrived on it. I got a hanker- began to Ecoh the dancing Betty and switched y bácjc ta ing arter puthallsm ido, at De
advertisements in the local school and university, this time. We had a monthly newspaper. And magazine called the "Bugle it: "YOU. Call" "and found myself Pavlova.....ten editor.
dollars.' My Job was to write the leading articles and to keep In those days, I Bot. two I Hollars a week pocket" money contributors up to scratch.
remember writing sentendous from my father which had fo articles on keeping, the campus do for lunches as well, but 1 NEXT SATURDAY tidy, and the value. of determined to have my dancing esprit de corps. It was pretty lessons. lousy Journalism but I guess 1 wos learning self..
Песни Ресс
My First Part As An Actor During the holidays I earn
Then Jobs As to express my ed money working for a bla San Diego florist'. I used to
PUBLICLY
By Wilfred Ryder
A Barker And A Guide
REBUKED
The Prime Milster thus owing prayers on,
to
zlinatúró
►
thure la Hớ mistaking to Israel -kað. · dlrbudy" Nagrath destilbeit by Grubb Pasha: both showed he was supporting that the Army b
The public outcry for tile «limisan of Clubb Pasha Cond oller Arlish officers from Uie Legion is growing In advance of Mukki,ana Glubb Pasha, · Majör÷Öéhkrol · Glübü' Bas at all. He mid: "No other per-
Commission's Andings British commander of the answered these criticists at a son is enillled to speak or ans made it clear there would be
the Friday Full reports Arab Legion which is train- pre conference.
nounco a polley in our name retallation against further ng after the Incident, the Pro- have reached London
and
thi refugees ceptor-General of the Moslem ed, equipped and to a large roved that he said: "I doubt which is contrary to the polley alon
should bo stilled in their
Mohammed Abu helf Brotherhood, extent, Bhaticed by Britain, whether
en bo we have drawn up to serve former homes, now in Israel. al-Rahman Khalifah, pubilate infiltration The Premier has publicly stopptil einpletely until the but homeland and nation Fürther more, according t the blamed Ule "neglect of respons
bre rettled in new
Premier, and severely reprimanded regues
Jordan's Bighalufë “tó The Premier then went on to nic Clubb Pastialitate ible officinis", for the attnek. Hu Maj. General Glubb He the armistice.
Prevented
the Premier's office Tahd has not done so by name but from retaliating.
ough outline his overtiment's bolley to the armiatics prevented, he headed a demonstration to Big as exactly the contrary of that tallation and that tenidos
Thould be found how hott
of British officers and its Violated her signature
command entrusted to "faithful? 2. Umas this year. The Jordanian "The Government's poller was the attitude of the British and Jordanians. The Mosiem Brother- The rift springs from the Government was all ring to and is still to repulse by force American Government Hood in Nebling and five deputies
paid by hele Undertaking me to chastise the aggressor?,
HOT, and a pennor haya, Dublicly, supu feccat seven-hour Jarnell and hol carry but military whatever the results may be..!
Memes ported there: Romandazi gyd tacle on #tib Jordan village of operations against Israël, 21994, when sumy 60 people though, the pressure of public will be repulsed, by, farce. All [dle Evéry bggresión : henceforth
Report
from Amman, state The Prime Minister also said: that Increasing pressure is were killed. Ten fer or ulé opiḥion was now Heavy.
talk about settlement of the "Every responsible person, whosh being brought to bear on the Arab Legion from a nearby
réfugees, is nönsetisie, and we sincknem of falluss: tó-áld, the Goyontient and to. Village dame to helpablit could
sce no jusulication for lowing inhabitants of Gibys in repellinin active meastirea ddle Bécatise, they deta
tle attack Uili-von. La patahlialind,” And, should the timo, by plunging into it. Our will be punished. This is a hand of British sutnumbered.Alki,” th”: AmniéH;
polley is based on the returnerence 16% Milkerlar, confidrawn from of the refugees to their homes mileston hò nhu pet up to inquire. Langhansoldan dicant " and "property."
whom he refera.
För ni Banding rain
fater, the
isayed