With "To Kill a Mockingbird" Peck & Peters Rock The Silver Screen
The movie studios saw little future with a film that was short on action and romance, forgetting the power of great acting.
The power of Harper Lee’s classic To Kill a Mockingbird was on full display during the filming of the movie, which starred Gregory Peck as the lawyer Atticus Finch, and Brock Peters as Tom Robinson, a black man accused of rape.
Completely unscripted, Peters begins to cry while filming his testifying scenes, causing a visibly shaken Gregory Peck to have to look past him, instead of in the eyes, to avoid choking up himself. Peck has said repeatedly that the scene was the most gut-wrenching of his career.
According to Peters, the producers were reluctant to cast him, because he had been typecast as a villain in previous productions. A product of NYC's famed Music and Arts High School, Peters (born George Fisher) initially fielded more odd jobs than acting jobs as he worked his way up from Harlem poverty. After landing a stage role in "Porgy and Bess" in 1949, he quit physical education studies at the City College of New York and went on tour with the acclaimed musical. His film debut came in "Carmen Jones" (1954).
Despite the To Kill a Mockingbird winning the Pulitzer Prize, major Hollywood studios were not very interested in securing the film rights, saying that the story lacked action and romance (with the absence of a love story), and that the villain does not get a big comeuppance. Producer Alan J. Pakula disagreed, however, and persuaded director Robert Mulligan, his producing partner at that time, that it would make a good film for their Pakula-Mulligan Productions. Together, they were able to convince Gregory Peck to play the lead.
Peck journeyed to Monroeville, Alabama with Mulligan and Pakula to meet Harper Lee's ailing father. True to the story, Amasa Lee really had been a widower who raised his children by himself, and at the same time was ready to defend a black man falsely accused of crimes he did not commit. The experience of meeting the actual man aided Peck's performance immeasurably.
This is one of my all-time favorite reads! It was part of my grade 11 English class, and Mr. Creighton, our teacher, chose some fantastic classic books for us to dive into and discuss together. Experiencing this story as a teenager created such a different vibe than how I might view it later in life. I remember feeling so outraged by the treatment of certain characters and the awful racial discrimination depicted in the book—it sparked some really meaningful conversations with my classmates.
I checked out Wikipedia to jog my memory about the story, and it brought back so many powerful feelings. While we've made progress in understanding and fighting discrimination and racism over the past 75 years, it's clear that there are still many who have yet to embrace the values of tolerance and understanding.