Gregory Peck

A small town in Alabama in 1932: by the AFI's summary, when the lawyer Atticus Finch agrees to defend Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping Mayella Violet Ewell, his children have to defend themselves against the racist talk of their schoolmates; Atticus gets Mayella to admit that her father beat her and shows that Tom is innocent, and the all-white jury returns a guilty verdict all the same. That is Gregory Peck's part in To Kill a Mockingbird. The AFI lists the film's eight Oscar nominations and writes that the last three categories were won; one of those three was Peck's, for lead actor. Fifteen years before, in Elia Kazan's Gentleman's Agreement, he was the journalist Philip Schuyler Green, who cannot warm to a series of articles on antisemitism, then understands that some things can only be known at first hand and decides to appear Jewish in other people's eyes. The catalogue's thirty-nine films for him fall between 1944 and 1978. The 1993 Berlinale set its honorary Golden Bear aside for him.