Can We Talk 2

Favorite Actors

         I love those old Gregory Peck movies. They've run quite a few on TCM this week, including To Kill A Mockingbird and Cape Fear. (Actually, Robert Mitchum surprised me with how creepy he could be in that movie.) Peck could play the bad guy with equal dignity and importance, as in Duel In The Sun and Needful Things. In How The West Was Won, he played a small part; the real protagonists were two sisters played by Debbie Reynolds and Carroll Baker.

I liked Peck in The Big Country, which was full of big stars. Burl Ives and Charles Bickford were the warring parties. Chuck Connors was the no good son of Ives; Charlton Heston, another heart throb, was Bickford's right hand man. Jean Simmons was the wise woman who won Peck in the end. I could watch Peck or Heston in almost anything.

         In fact if I had to pick my all time favorite actors, the list would include Heston and Peck at the top, with Anthony Quinn, Jack Lemmon, Betty Davis, Burt Lancaster, Ingrid Bergman, Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Stewart, Bogie and Bacall. If I can make the list longer, I'd include Robert Duvall, Paul Newman, and Tommy Lee Jones. But I always like Katherine Hepburn, Albert Finney, Laurence Olivier, and Robert Preston. If you include musicals, you have to have Howard Kiel, Shirley Jones, Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire.

         As you can see once I get past the first three, I can't stop.