We wanted a likeable, loeable, idealistic all-round guy last night when we crowded Roy Thomson Hall for A Conversation With Gregory Peck.

And despite appendicitis in July, that is exactly what the 80-year-old actor gave us.

Many of Peck's roles were chock-full of impurities, of course, and his biggest commercial hit was The Omen, where he found he was Satan's foster father. But he was an idealistic missionary priest when The Keys Of The Kingdom (1944) made him a star. He was an idealistic writer when Gentleman's Agreement (1947) confirmed it with a second Oscar nomination. And, of course, an idealistic lawyer in To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) finally won him the statue and lifetime fans.

"We're in the age of the antihero," he mused late last night. "It's the fashion of the day. But I always say, if you want brain surgery, you don't want an antihero to do it."

Few other regrets were expressed in an evening that began with a model suite of good moments from his movies, and carried on with almost two hours of anecdote and modest opinion.

He recalled the first day of shooting To Kill A Mockingbird when author Harper Lee told him, "Gregory, you've got a little pot belly just like my daddy."

"Harper," he says he replied, "that's great acting."

He was even generous enough to namedrop a little, as we made it perfectly clear we wanted -- for instance, how when the Sinatras and the Rainiers and Cary Grant got together with the Pecks in the south of France, Grant felt lonely and unloved.

"I said, 'Look, you're Cary Grant, there must be somebody.' "

And Grant admitted there was a publicist in London, and yes, he did have a private jet on the tarmac at Nice on loan from Faberge, but he couldn't just ... but of course he could, and, on Peck's urging, did, and the publicist became Grant's fourth and last and most satisfying wife.

Peck was every inch -- 74 of them -- a gentleman, tie-and-jacketed, lean, silver-haired. He seemed to find the role of Gregory Peck entirely congenial.

Sure, he said, he would like to have done more comedy. "I tried to inject a bit of humor when I could, but most of the comedies were going to my friend Cary Grant, and when I got one, I could almost see his thumb prints on it."

Asked about the effects in Moby Dick, he said dryly, "The rubber whale wasn't so dangerous, but (director John) Huston was in his Irish period." i.e. There were more high-sea challenges than might have been absolutely necessary.

He credited being a keen reader for his ability to pick out a good script, with the exceptions of saying no to High Noon and saying yes to I Walk The Line. To Kill A Mockingbird is, no hesitation, his favorite of his movies. "For a good reason. The movie is still very much alive 34 years after we made it." He still receives "bundles" of high school essays on the subject.

Held in reserve for a closing wave was his wife of 40 years. Veronique Passani had interviewed him in Paris on his way to film Roman Holiday, with Audrey Hepburn. Six months later, when he found himself back in Paris with time to kill, he phoned her at the paper and pressed her to join him for lunch.

She accepted, after some obvious reluctance, and almost immediately they were inseparable. Eventually he mustered the courage to ask why she had hesitated for so long. Apparently she had had to break off an interview with Albert Schweitzer ... at the home of Jean-Paul Sartre.

He did not mention what this had done to her career. He did say with some pride what this had done to her social life.


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