Brock Peters To Deliver Peck's Eulogy At Funeral Mass Monday
doc
Fri Jun 13, 8:27 PM ET - Reuters
By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hollywood will pay its last respects next week
to film great Gregory Peck (news) at a public memorial service led by
a tribute from the actor who played the wrongly accused black man
defended by white lawyer Atticus Finch in Peck's most famous film
role.
Brock Peters, who co-starred in "To Kill a Mockingbird" and remained
close friends with Peck for four decades, will deliver Peck's eulogy
at a mass set for 2 p.m. (5 p.m. EDT) Monday at the Cathedral of Our
Lady of Angels in downtown Los Angeles, Peck's spokesman said on
Friday.
Peck died peacefully at his Los Angeles home early Thursday with his
wife of 48 years, Veronique, by his side. He was 87.
In "To Kill a Mockingbird," Peters, now 75, played the hapless Tom
Robinson (news), wrongly accused of raping a white woman in a small
Depression-era Southern town.
The 1962 film, based on the Pulitzer-Prize winning novel of the same
name, earned Peck his only Oscar as best actor for his role as the
principled lawyer who stands by Robinson despite the foregone
conclusion of a guilty verdict by an all-white jury. The American Film
Institute (news - web sites) recently named the character of Atticus
Finch as the greatest hero in movie history.
Peters, who made his film debut in 1954's "Carmen Jones," has appeared
in dozens of theater, film and TV productions over the years,
including the 1996 film "Ghosts of Mississippi." He earned a Tony
nomination for a lead role in Broadway's "Lost in the Stars."
Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony will celebrate the public mass at
the $193 million cathedral, which opened its doors last September as
the new home of the Los Angeles archdiocese. Peck's spokesman Monroe
Friedman, said the actor's remains will be laid to rest at a private
interment earlier in the day.
Plans for the service materialized as tributes continued to flow in
for Peck, one of the last great stars of Hollywood's golden era and a
performer who came to embody dignity and integrity.
California Gov. Gray Davis (news - web sites) saluted Peck as a "tower
of integrity" and the "quintessential good guy both on screen and
off."
Boggy Wench
>close friends with Peck for four decades, will deliver Peck's eulogy
I can think of no more fitting person to do this. Mr. Peters was as powerful
in the film as Mr. Peck but because of his ethnicity has consistently been
overlooked and greatly underused as an actor.
Since I live only a couple of hours from where Harper Lee lives, I am fully
aware that the attitude of her novel lives on as I write this. What a sad
commentary.
I commend the person (Mrs. Peck?) for choosing Brock Peters to eulogize her
husband. He is resting in peace -- a great man, knowing now that his life's
work opened a few eyes and hearts to the ignorance of their belief systems.
Hyfler/Rosner
"Boggy Wench" <bawdya...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030614203556...@mb-m18.aol.com...
>
> Since I live only a couple of hours from where Harper Lee lives,
I think you mean lived. Unless she's moved within the last few years, she
lives very quietly a couple of blocks away from me in Manhattan. Someone I
know lives in her building.
doc
>Anyone in the group join in the speculation that Harper Lee, in reality,
>did *not* write To Kill A Mockingbird? I can recall reading some years ago
>a fairly detailed belief that Truman Capote, perhaps, was responsible for
>it, published under her name. It makes no sense, but seemed to be a point
>of fairly fervant belief.
Capote's writing style is more straightforward and less dense than
Lee's. It would be a stretch for me to believe that he ghosted
MOCKINGBIRD. In his later stages of debauchery, he never had an
unspoken -- and unpublished -- thought. His authorship of the
classic novel would have been much provender for the diminutive
writer's litany of resentments.
I can't recall his making a claim in regard to MOCKINGBIRD. I can,
however, recall his making ridiculous claims about having slept with
several famous leading men of the 40s and 50s, and I can recall his
making equally ridiculous claims about intimate conversations he had
with the late Ms. Onasis and other celebrities.
Since Capote wasn't above making ridiculous, unsubstantiated claim
about trifling matters of a sexual or gossipy nature, one would think
that his legitimate claim to authorship of this renowned novel might
not be overlooked in his drunken rants.
No, it is more likely that Jim Garrison's theory of the Kennedy
assassination is correct than is the premise that Truman Capote is the
author of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, IMHO.
<That was an ironic statement based on the incredible claims Garrison
made about involvement of LBJ, the CIA, the mob and the homosexual
underworld of New Orleans as co-conspirators in the Kennedy murder. No
doubt many of you might find Garrison's thesis credible. All I can
say is, No offense.>
Loki
<t_del...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>On Sun, 15 Jun 2003 06:55:49 GMT, DrMojo <no...@none.nope> wrote:
>
>>Anyone in the group join in the speculation that Harper Lee, in reality,
>>did *not* write To Kill A Mockingbird? I can recall reading some years ago
>>a fairly detailed belief that Truman Capote, perhaps, was responsible for
>>it, published under her name.
>
>The story I heard was that one of the child characters was supposed to
>have been based on Truman Capote. I have zero idea whether there's
>any truth to it.
Dill was based on her childhood friend Truman Capote from what I have
heard.
Loki
doc
>Dill was based on her childhood friend Truman Capote from what I have
>heard.
You are correct, Sir.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/harperle.htm
American writer, famous for her race relations novel TO KILL A
MOCKINGBIRD, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. The book
became an international bestseller and was adapted into screen in
1962. Lee was 34 when the work was published, and it has remained her
only novel.
"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They
don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do
one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to
kill a mockingbird."
Descendent from Robert E. Lee, the Southern Civil War general, Harper
Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama. Her father was a former
newspaper editor and proprietor, who had served as a state senator and
practiced as a lawyer in Monroeville. Lee studied law at the
University of Alabama from 1945 to 1949, and spent a year as an
exchange student in Oxford University, Wellington Square. Six months
before finishing her studies, she went to New York to pursue a
literary career. She worked as an Airline reservation clerk with
Eastern Air Lines and British Overseas Airways during the 1950s. In
1959 Lee accompanied Truman Capote to Holcombe, Kansas, as a research
assistant for Capote's classic 'non-fiction' novel In Cold Blood
(1966).
To Kill a Mockingbird was Lee's first novel. The book is set in
Maycomb, Alabama, in the 1930s. Atticus Finch, a lawyer and a father,
defends a black man, Tom Robinson, who is accused of raping a poor
white girl, Mayella Ewell. The setting and several of the characters
are drawn from life - Finch was the maiden name of Lee's mother and
the character of Dill was drawn from Capote, Lee's childhood friend.
The trial itself has parallels to the infamous "Scottboro Trial," in
which the charge was rape. In both, too, the defendants were
African-American men and the accusers white women.
"But there is one way in this country in which all men are created
equal - there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal
of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the
ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution,
gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United
States of the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court
which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human
institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers,
and in our courts all men are created equal." (Finch defending Tom
Robinson)
The narrator is Finch's daughter, nicknamed Scout, an immensely
intelligent and observant child. She starts the story when she is six
and relates many of her experiences, usual interests of a child, and
events which break the sheltered world of childhood. Her mother is
dead and she tries to keep pace with her older brother Jem. He breaks
his arm so badly that it heals shorter than the other. One day the
children meet Dill, their new seven-year-old friend. They become
interested in Boo Radley, a recluse man in his thirties. However, he
is not the frightening person as they first had imagined. During the
humorous and sad events Scout and Jem learn a lesson in good and evil,
and compassion and justice. As Scout's narrative goes on, the reader
realizes that she will never kill a mockingbird or become a racist.
Scout tells her story in her own language which is obviously that of a
child, but she also analyzes people and their actions from the
viewpoint of an already grown-up, mature person.
The first plot tells the story of Boo Radley, who is generally
considered deranged, and the second concerns Tom Robinson. A jury of
twelve white men believe two whites and refuse to look past the color
of man's skin and convict Robinson of a crime, rape, he did not
commit. Atticus, assigned to defend Tom, loses in court. Tom tries to
escape and is shot dead. Bob Ewell, Mayella's father, is obviously
guilty of beating her for making sexual advances toward Tom. Bob
attacks Jem and Scout because Atticus has exposed his daughter and him
as liars. The children are saved by Boo Radley, who stabs Bob Ewell to
death. Atticus and Calpurnia, the black cook, slowly became the moral
centre of the book. They are portrayed as pillars of society who do
not share society's prejudices. The story emphasizes that the children
are born with an instinct for justice and absorb prejudices in the
socialization process. Tom becomes a scapegoat of society's prejudice
and violence. - "Mr. Finch, there's just some kind of men you have to
shoot before you can say hidy to 'em. Even then, they ain't worth the
bullet it takes to shoot 'em. Ewell 'as one of 'em."
Although her first novel gained a huge success, Lee did not continue
her career as a writer. She returned from New York to Monroeville,
where she has lived avoiding interviews. To Kill a Mockingbird has
been translated into several languages. An illustrated English edition
appeared in Moscow in 1977 for propaganda reasons. In the foreword
Nadiya Matuzova, Dr.Philol., wrongly stated that "Harper Lee did not
live to see her fiftieth birthday," and added perhaps rightly: "But
her only, remarkable novel which continued the best traditions of the
American authors who wrote about America's South - Mark Twain, William
Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell and many others - will forever belong in
the treasure of progressive American literature."
For further reading: Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee,
Joyce Milton, Tessa Krailing (paperback 1984); ToKill a Mockingbird
Notes, ed. by Eva Fitzwater( 1984); Understanding To Kill a
Mockingbird by Claudia Durst Johnson and Harper Lee (1994); You Can Go
Home Again by Rebecca Lutterell Bailey (1993); Harper Lee's To Kill a
Mockingbird, ed. by Harold Bloom (1995); To Kill a Mockingbird:
Threatening Boundaries by Claudia Durst Johnson (1995) - See also
other famous writers who have published only one novel during their
lifetime: Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man, 1952), Margaret Mitchell (Gone
with the Wind, 1936) - About the film: For Harper Lee, the casting was
precisely right - the studio had turned down Rock Hudson, who had
discovered Lee's novel, and bought the rights for Gregory Peck. Before
beginning of his work, Peck went to Alabama and met the real Atticus
Finch, Lee's father Amasa Lee. In gratitude for his performance, Lee
presented him with her father's own watch. Dill Harris, played by
nine-year-old John Megna, was a character based on Lee's childhood
friend Truman Capote. The film appeared at the peak of the Civil
Rights Movement, and was an immediate popular success. - From Retakes:
Behind the Scenes of 500 Classic Movies by John Eastman (1989) and
Novels Into Films by John C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh (1999) - All
reviews were not positive: "To Kill a Mockingbird relates the Cult of
Childhood to the Negro Problem with disastrous results. Before the
intellectual confusion of the project is considered, it should be
noted that this is not much of a movie even by purely formal
standards." (Andrew Sarris, Village Voice, March 7, 1963)
doc
>Dill was based on her childhood friend Truman Capote from what I have
>heard.
To be honest, I had not remembered their intimate association, but
their writing styles are so profoundly different that it is absurd to
think Capote is responsible for TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.
James Neibaur
cubby...@aol.com wrote on 6/15/03 12:28 PM:
> Dill was based on her childhood friend Truman Capote from what I have
> heard.
And the actor who played Dill died of AIDS a few years ago.
JN
Terrymelin
>in the film as Mr. Peck but because of his ethnicity has consistently been
>overlooked and greatly underused as an actor.
>
And what facts and evidence do you have to back up this hare-brained idea?
>I commend the person (Mrs. Peck?) for choosing Brock Peters to eulogize her
>husband. He is resting in peace -- a great man, knowing now that his life's
>work opened a few eyes and hearts to the ignorance of their belief systems.
I thought he was an actor whose prime accomplishment ought to be to entertain
people. What a funny notion.
Terry Ellsworth
Terrymelin
>did *not* write To Kill A Mockingbird? I can recall reading some years ago
>a fairly detailed belief that Truman Capote, perhaps, was responsible for
Oh, please. Truman Capote couldn't have written such a well-reasoned book if
his life depended on it.
Terry Ellsworth
Harry Krause
Here we go again. Terry Ellsworth, a person of absolutely no
accomplishment, knocking those who contributed. This newsgroup is full
of potshot taking jerkoffs like Terry, who never have and never will do
anything, and are insanely jealous of those who have done something with
their lives.
Interestingly, these whiners all seem to be on the right-hand side of
the political spectrum, the side devoid of ideas.
--
* * *
email sent to etaoin...@hotmail.com will *never* get to me.
Loki
Harry, Harry, Harry... How can you say such a thing about terry? After
all, he is the person who's contribution to the written word includes:
Subj: Re: DEATH WATCH: GOP Rule in Senate
Date: 5/23/01 3:20:27 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: Terrymelin
To: Cubby77267
Go fuck yourself
**
and
Subj: Re: DEATH WATCH: GOP Rule in Senate
Date: 5/23/01 9:24:47 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From: terry...@aol.com (Terrymelin)
To: cubby...@aol.com
You're too much of a worthless whore to bother responding to.
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From: terry...@aol.com (Terrymelin)
To: cubby...@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.obituaries
Date: 23 May 2001 16:24:18 GMT
References: <3b0bd2aa...@news.midtown.net>
Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com
Subject: Re: DEATH WATCH: GOP Rule in Senate
Message-ID: <20010523122418...@ng-bg1.aol.com>
**
Loki
Harry Krause
Terry's a flaming ass, but he's not the only chunka right-wing trash who
has never accomplished anything, yet slams the life work of those who
have contributed. Capote was a contributor.
Cpl. O'Reilly
<jnei...@wi.rr.com> wrote:
His name was John Megna, and he was Connie Stevens' brother. He was
also the Bonk-Bonk-on-the-Head Kid from the "Miri" episode of Star
Trek. He died on September 5, 1995 of AIDS aged 42.
James Neibaur
ra...@mash.com.invalid wrote on 6/15/03 8:47 PM:
> His name was John Megna, and he was Connie Stevens' brother. He was
> also the Bonk-Bonk-on-the-Head Kid from the "Miri" episode of Star
> Trek. He died on September 5, 1995 of AIDS aged 42.
Never saw the Star Trek episode, but Megna was certainly very good in To
Kill A Mockingbird. It is a shame that he died so young.
I didn't realize he was Connie Stevens' brother.
JN
Robert Feigel (aka Bob)
John Megna was from Brooklyn, New York, a son of Eleanor Megna, who
had been a successful night club singer. His father was a druggist.
His mother brought him to Hollywood from New York to play Dill in
Mockingbird. He had appeared on the Broadway stage, playing a young
boy in the South in "All the Way Home", based on James Agee's Pulitzer
Prize novel, A Death in the Family, and in "Greewich." Other John
Megna credits include:
* Cannonball Run 1981
* Go Tell the Spartans 1978
* The Ratings Game 1984
* Smokey and the Bandit II 1980
* Star Trek episode 12 'Mira' October 27 1966 (Stardate: 2713.5)
John Megna died on September 4 1995 from complications of AIDS. He was
the youngest brother of Connie and Chuck Stevens.
(From: http://mockingbird.chebucto.org/megna.html)
********
A mouse click is all it takes to give food at: <http://www.thehungersite.com>
The art & the artists of New Zealand's Tutukaka Coast: <http://www.earthsea.co.nz>
Wax-up and drop-in of Surfing's Golden Years: <http://www.earthsea.co.nz/surfwriterintro1.htm>
For email change "@earthsea.co.enzed" to "@earthsea.co.nz"
doc
What are you so exorcised about, Harry? Of course, Ellsworth a dick.
He even has a union card and was voted shop steward of his local --
the IBOD. That is old news.
And it isn't like Capote was being wildly flamed on the thread which
made it into my queue (although I have killfiled a great many of the
agitators). Few people dispute that IN COLD BLOOD is a magnum opus.
By the same token, however, fewer still dispute that Capote squandered
his substance in riotous living and became a peevish little queen in
his journey to the bottom.
It is quite sad actually. A giant once inhabited his body.
UNANSWERED PRAYERS is a sad portrait of hubris and self-will. It was
painful to read.
The Kentucky Wizard
and after consultations with my Joint Chiefs of Staff, being briefed by
members of my Cabinet and telephone conversations with various world
leaders, I have come to the following conclusions:
Megna also played the character of "new boy" in the 1964 film, "Hush...Hush,
Sweet Charlotte", and the character of "Mario Vincenti" in the 1966 film,
"Blindfold".
--
© The Wiz ®
«¤»¥«¤»¥«¤»
doc
>UNANSWERED PRAYERS is a sad portrait of hubris and self-will. It was
>painful to read.
I wish I could say that I intentionally misnamed Capote's posthumous
novel, but my faux pas was due, faunte de mieux, more to the ravages
of age and the lateness of the hour than any skill with bon mot.
Of course, it was ANSWERED PRAYERS -- or at least that was the title.