MovieChat Forums > On the Beach (1959) Discussion > peck was an idiot

peck was an idiot

posted 9 years ago by whiskeyTango-06
9 replies | jump to latest

to think that nuking japan didn't end the war, and save hundreds of thousands of lives, as opposed to invading the country?

he didn't serve due to injuries from dance lessons?

oh, my!

[–] darkavenger77 9 years ago

He rejected actual reality and substituted his own.

My dad served in the Pacific and said when they surrender was announced you could have heard the US troops cheer in Tokyo.

Ignoring politics doesn't mean politics will ignore you.
-Pericles paraphrased in <100 characters

[–] hobnob53 9 years ago

Obviously you're talking about Peck's real life, not this movie.

Where do you get the idea that he didn't think dropping the A-bombs on Japan wasn't what ended the war?

He tried to enlist but was rated 4F and turned down by every service, and yes, it was due to having suffered a compressed vertebra as a result of having a ballet instructor shove her knee into his spine, causing a permanent injury. During most of his career his publicists claimed the injury was from a college rowing accident, which they thought sounded more "manly", but Peck himself eventually revealed the truth. In any case, it wasn't his fault that he was classified unfit for service.

And whatever he was, he was not an idiot.

[–] darkavenger77 9 years ago

Where do you get the idea that he didn't think dropping the A-bombs on Japan wasn't what ended the war?

While you were not replying to me, being one of the geeks that reads trivia about films I watch, I found it in the trivia section here on IMDB:

Gregory Peck was a lifelong opponent of nuclear weapons, and made On the Beach (1959) for this reason. Peck believed atomic weapons should not have been used during World War II, and the reason for Japan's surrender was the Soviet Union's declaration of war on 9 August 1945 and simultaneous invasion of Manchuria.

I cannot find a direct quote, however the statement is consistent with his anti-nuclear weapons position. That is documented in Gregory Peck: A Bio-bibliography by Gerard Molyneaux. You can find relevant parts of it on Google Books.

Ignoring politics doesn't mean politics will ignore you.
-Pericles paraphrased in <100 characters

[–] hobnob53 9 years ago

Peck's opposition to nuclear weapons is well-known (and hardly unique; so are most people, when you get right down to it), and in this he was in the company of, among others, Ronald Reagan.

But regarding his alleged statement of what caused Japan to surrender, while I cannot say definitively whether this is accurate or not, I can say I have never read anything that says Peck ever said such a thing. And sorry, but with all due respect to the IMDb trivia page, this is simply stuff submitted by the site's users and unchecked for accuracy; it's often wrong and hardly a reliable source, especially since, in this case, it gets the date of the USSR's declaration of war on Japan wrong (it was August 8, not 9).

Again, I can't say he never said any such thing, but over many years of extensive reading about Peck and seeing him interviewed I never heard of him saying any such thing about the reasons for Japan's surrender. For that matter, I never heard of him opposing the use of the bombs on Japan. Perhaps he said it in the sense that it was something we'd have been better off not having to do. I don't know, just positing possible alternatives.

However, if Peck really did say what he's supposed to have said, then he was wrong. Japan obviously surrendered because of the bombs (the Emperor himself said so in his address of surrender), and using them was the right thing to do, even if not something to be proud of.

But that still wouldn't make him an "idiot".

[–] dannieboy20906 9 years ago

Agree. Some people like to over-generalize.

The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.

[–] darkavenger77 9 years ago

I'd agree with that, and certainly the opposition to the needless name calling.

While reading about Peck, I saw Reagan has been quoted as calling Peck "my former friend" and that was thought to be due to Peck's opposition to Reagan's SDI plan in the 80's.

The only plausible reason for the date discrepancy is due to the international date line. When it was 8 August in Russia/Japan, it was 9 August in the US. I'd agree the proper date was where the event took place, 8 August.

Ignoring politics doesn't mean politics will ignore you.
-Pericles paraphrased in <100 characters

[–] hobnob53 9 years ago

When it was 8 August in Russia/Japan, it was 9 August in the US. I'd agree the proper date was where the event took place, 8 August.

You got it backwards, darkavenger. The International Dateline runs the other way -- when it's August 9 in Japan it's August 8 in the US! They're a day ahead.

But the USSR declared war in Moscow on August 8. Since I don't know the exact hour at which they did so, I can't say what day it was in Japan (or the States), but August 8 is the universally accepted date of the Soviets' declaration.

Not that I want to be cast in the role of defender of the Soviet dictatorship, but many people have said that the USSR only declared war after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, since they knew the war would likely end soon and wanted to grab territory before Japan surrendered. While obviously that was a factor, in truth it must be said that Stalin was honoring his commitment at Yalta, namely that the USSR would declare war on Japan three months after V-E Day. That was May 8; three months from then is August 8. So the Soviets came in exactly when they'd said they would, and they had to have been planning to do so, since an invasion of that size isn't something that could be organized and launched in two days.

Still, the coincidence of timing didn't look good, and a lot of people since have been accusing the Russians of opportunistically delaying their entry until after the first bomb, even though logistically this makes no sense. The question I have is whether, had the first bomb not been dropped until August 9 or 10, the Soviets would still have declared war on the 8th. I think probably, as they were ready to go, and wanted to be in on the kill.

[–] darkavenger77 9 years ago

You got it backwards, darkavenger. The International Dateline runs the other way -- when it's August 9 in Japan it's August 8 in the US! They're a day ahead.

A dyslexic moment for sure. Thanks for the correction.  It's 5 o'clock somewhere.

Ignoring politics doesn't mean politics will ignore you.
-Pericles paraphrased in <100 characters

[–] Eric-62-2 9 years ago

While reading about Peck, I saw Reagan has been quoted as calling Peck "my former friend" and that was thought to be due to Peck's opposition to Reagan's SDI plan in the 80's.

If there was a rift between Reagan and Peck on a personal level, I think it had more to do with Peck narrating a TV spot for Norman Lear's People For The American Way group against the Robert Bork nomination to the Supreme Court (out of deference to my friend Hob, I will refrain from using certain adjectives about the TV spot and PAW!).

Peck also played a US President clearly meant to be Reaganesque in the rather ludicrous "Amazing Grace And Chuck" that like many 1980s movies tried to boil down the issue of nuclear disarmament to one of blaming both sides in the Cold War and suggesting that some spirit of kumbaya embodied in naive gestures was all that was needed to get results done (and in the meantime forget all about the ongoing matter of human rights abuses in the Soviet bloc) and that Reaganesque leaders were too dense to realize that because of their distaste for Soviet Communism which they saw as "warmongering." The ultimate laugh on them which has made movies like that, along with "WarGames", "The Day After", "2010" and similar hokum is that Reagan in the face of all that hate was pursuing a policy that resulted in the fulfillment of their objectives: the end of the nuclear terror threat.

"On The Beach" is a movie that doesn't fall victim to that kind of pretentiousness because it deals with a broader human-interest theme that is fascinating and isn't about critiquing specific political figures and policies. It's the reason why that movie endures.