Gregory Peck Is TCM’s Star of the Month — How to Watch His Movies To Celebrate His Legacy
What To Know
- Gregory Peck is TCM’s Star of the Month for May, with his films airing on Friday nights.
- Beyond acting, Peck was a prominent civil rights activist.
- TCM’s lineup will showcase both Peck’s celebrated and lesser-known performances.
If it weren’t for a theater director at the University of California, Berkeley, who urged Eldred Gregory Peck to give acting a try, the world might never have known the legendary artist. But thankfully for movie audiences, Peck dropped his pre-med studies (and later his first name), switching his major to English and setting the stage for him to become one of Hollywood’s most prolific leading men of his generation.
“Actor” was just one of Peck’s roles in life. An outspoken civil rights activist, he marched on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963 and ended up on President Richard Nixon‘s “enemies list” in the early 1970s. Though he was known as one of the last gentlemen of Hollywood’s golden age due to his humility, morality, and kindness, Peck was far from a pushover. “I can be tough and combative when the occasion demands,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1974. “I have my share of vanity. I couldn’t have survived for 30 years in the highly competitive business of movies without being stubborn and, when necessary, hard.”
Everett Collection
Garnering his first Best Actor Oscar nom in 1946, it took nearly 20 years and four more nominations before he won his only Academy Award in 1963 for his portrayal of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Peck’s wide acting range is seen in roles such as terrorized attorney Sam Bowden in Cape Fear (1962); a man with amnesia who’s accused of murder in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Spellbound (1945); Nazi leader Josef Mengele in The Boys From Brazil (1978); and Captain Ahab in Moby Dick (1956). Some lesser-known roles are also featured this month, including Peck’s turn as ladies’ man Lewton “Lewt” McCanles in Duel in the Sun (1946) and a Soviet guerrilla fighter in his feature film debut Days of Glory (1944).
Celebrate the life and work of an iconic actor who Kirk Douglas said represented “integrity, compassion and honesty” this month on TCM on Friday nights starting at 8 pm ET.
Click here to download or view the full printable May 2026 TCM schedule.
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