He was always one of my very favorites, too. When Peck was a young man and my father was a young man, many people thought they bore a striking resemblance to each other.
My father was Robert “Bob” Dutton, longtime movie theater manager in Southern Pines.
Years ago, it was the custom for the theater manager (always dressed in a nice suit) to stand in the lobby when a show “let out” and silently watch as the theater patrons passed by and went out the doors.
One time, in the late ’40s or early ’50s, when a Gregory Peck film was playing at the Sunrise, my father was standing in the lobby watching the crowd leave when two smiling elderly ladies came up to him with hands extended, and one said to my father, “Wonderful performance, Mr. Peck!”
Ebie Akerson
Vancouver, Wash.
