thumb|right|[[Linda Evans and Peppard in TV's Banacek (1974) ]]
George Peppard (October 1, 1928 – May 8, 1994) was an American actor. He secured a major role as struggling writer Paul Varjak when he starred alongside Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), and later portrayed a character based on Howard Hughes in The Carpetbaggers (1964). On television, he played the title role of millionaire insurance investigator and sleuth Thomas Banacek in the early-1970s mystery series Banacek. He played Col. John "Hannibal" Smith, the cigar-smoking leader of a renegade commando squad in the 1980s action television series The A-Team.
Peppard enlisted in the United States Marine Corps on July 8, 1946, and rose to the rank of corporal, leaving the Corps at the end of his enlistment in January 1948.
During 1948 and 1949, he studied civil engineering at Purdue University where he was a member of the Purdue Playmakers theatre troupe and Beta Theta Pi fraternity.
Peppard then transferred to Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1955. (It took longer than normal because he dropped out for a year when his father died in 1951 and he had to finish his father's jobs.) He also trained at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. While living in Pittsburgh, Peppard worked as a radio DJ at WLOA in Braddock, Pennsylvania. While giving a weather update, he famously called incoming snow flurries "flow snurries". This was an anecdote he repeated in several later interviews, including one with former NFL player Rocky Bleier for WPXI.
In addition to acting, Peppard was a pilot. He spent a portion of his 1966 honeymoon training to fly his Learjet in Wichita, Kansas.
Career
Theatre
Peppard made his stage debut in 1949 at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. After moving to New York City, Peppard enrolled in the Actors Studio, where he studied the Method with Lee Strasberg. He did a variety of jobs to pay his way during this time, such as working as a disc jockey, being a radio station engineer, teaching fencing, driving a taxi and being a mechanic in a motorcycle repair shop.
He worked in summer stock in New England and appeared at the open air Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon for two seasons.
In August 1955, he appeared in the play The Sun Dial.
Early television appearances and transition to film
He worked as a cab driver until getting his first part in Lamp Unto My Feet. He appeared with Paul Newman, in The United States Steel Hour (1956), as the singing, guitar-playing baseball player Piney Woods in Bang the Drum Slowly, directed by Daniel Petrie.
He appeared in an episode of Kraft Theatre, "Flying Object at Three O'Clock High" (1956).
In March 1956, Peppard was on stage, off Broadway, in Beautiful Changes.
In April 1956, he appeared in a segment of an episode of "Cameras Three" performing from The Shoemaker's Holiday; The New York Times called his performance "beguiling".
In July 1956, he signed to make his film debut in The Strange One directed by Jack Garfein, based on the play End as a Man. It was the first film from Garfein as director and Calder Willingham as producer, plus for Peppard, Ben Gazzara, Geoffrey Horne, Pat Hingle, Arthur Storch and Clifton James. Filming took place in Florida. "I wouldn't say I was nervous," said Peppard, "just excited."
On his return to New York, he performed in "Out to Kill" on TV for Kraft. In September he joined the cast of Girls of Summer directed by Jack Garfein with Shelley Winters, Storch and Hingle, plus a title song by Stephen Sondheim. This reached Broadway in November. Brooks Atkinson said Peppard "expertly plays a sly, malicious dance teacher." It had only a short run.
The bulk of his work around this time was for television: The Kaiser Aluminum Hour ("A Real Fine Cutting Edge", directed by George Roy Hill), Studio One in Hollywood ("A Walk in the Forest"), The Alcoa Hour ("The Big Build-Up" with E. G. Marshall), Matinee Theatre ("End of the Rope" with John Drew Barrymore, "Thread That Runs So True", "Aftermath"), Kraft Theatre ("The Long Flight"), Alfred Hitchcock Presents ("The Diplomatic Corpse", with Peter Lorre directed by Paul Henreid), and Suspicion ("The Eye of Truth" with Joseph Cotten based on a script by Eric Ambler). The Strange One came out in April 1957 but despite some strong reviews – The New York Times called Peppard "resolute". – it was not a financial success.
In September 1957, he appeared in a trial run of a play by Robert Thom, The Minotaur, directed by Sidney Lumet.
Peppard played a key role in Little Moon of Alban (1958) alongside Christopher Plummer for the Hallmark Hall of Fame. The Los Angeles Times called him "excellent".
In May 1958, Peppard played his second film role, a support part in the Korean War movie Pork Chop Hill (1959) directed by Lewis Milestone. He was cast in part because he was unfamiliar to moviegoers.
In May 1958, he appeared in stock in A Swim in the Sea.
In October 1958, Peppard appeared on Broadway in The Pleasure of His Company (1958) starring Cyril Ritchard, who also directed. Peppard played the boyfriend who wants to marry Dolores Hart who was Ritchard's daughter; The New York Times called Peppard "admirable". The play was a hit and ran for a year.
During the show's run, Peppard auditioned successfully for MGM's Home from the Hill (1960) and the studio signed him to a long-term contract – which he had not wanted to do but was a condition for the film. In February 1959, Hedda Hopper announced Peppard would leave Company to make two films for MGM: Home from the Hill and The Subterraneans.
Home from the Hill was a prestigious film directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Robert Mitchum, who played Peppard's father. It featured several young actors MGM were hoping to develop, including Peppard, George Hamilton, and Luana Patten. During filming, Peppard said "Brando is a dead talent – I saw him in The Young Lions" – but said Peck is "a man of integrity as a star and a person. Lee Strasberg is the only person I know who is brilliant."
"I want to be an actor and proud of my craft", said Peppard. "I would like to be an actor who is starred but being a star is something you can't count on whereas acting is something I can work on." In April 1959 Hedda Hopper said he would be in Chatauqua but that was not made until a decade later, starring Elvis Presley, as The Trouble with Girls (1969). At the end of 1959 Hopper predicted Peppard would be a big star saying "he has great emotional power, is a fine athlete, and does offbeat characters such as James Dean excelled in." Sol Siegel announced he would play the lead in Two Weeks in Another Town. (Kirk Douglas ended up playing it.) He was also announced for the role of Arthur Blake in a film about the first Olympics called And Seven from America which was never made.
Peppard returned to television to star in an episode of the anthology series Startime, "Incident at a Corner" (1960) under the direction of Alfred Hitchcock alongside Vera Miles.
He played Teddy Roosevelt on television in an episode of Our American Heritage, "The Invincible Teddy" (1961).
Stardom
thumb|Peppard in [[Breakfast at Tiffany's (film)|Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)]]
His good looks, elegant manner and acting skills landed Peppard his most famous film role as Paul Varjak in Breakfast at Tiffany's with Audrey Hepburn, based on the novella of the same name by Truman Capote. Director Blake Edwards had not wanted Peppard, but was overruled by the producers. He was cast in July 1960. During filming Peppard did not get along with Hepburn or Patricia Neal, the latter calling him "cold and conceited".
In November 1961, a newspaper article dubbed him "the next big thing". Peppard said he had turned down two TV series and was "concentrating on big screen roles." His contract with MGM was for two pictures a year, allowing for one outside film and six TV appearances a year, plus the right to star in a play every second year. "In a series you don't have time to develop a character," he said. "There's no build up; in the first segment you're already established."
He was meant to appear in Unarmed in Paradise which was not made. He bought a script by Robert Blees called Baby Talk but it was also unmade.
Instead, MGM cast him in the lead of their epic western How the West Was Won in 1962.(His character spanned three sections of the episodic Cinerama extravaganza.) It was a massive hit.
He followed this with a war story for Carl Foreman, The Victors (1963), made in Europe. He was offered $200,000 to appear in The Long Ships but did not want to go to Yugoslavia for six months. He was going to do Next Time We Love with Ross Hunter but it was never made.
He starred in The Carpetbaggers, a 150-minute saga of a ruthless, Howard Hughes-like aviation and film mogul based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Harold Robbins. The cast included Elizabeth Ashley, who had an affair with Peppard during filming and later married him. She described him as "some kind of Nordic god – six feet tall with beautiful blond hair, blue eyes and a body out of every high school cheerleader's teenage lust fantasy." Ashley claimed Peppard "was never late on set and he had nothing but scorn for actors who weren't professional enough to keep that together."
She added that Peppard:
"My performances bore me", said Peppard in a 1964 interview, adding that his ambition was to deliver "one great performance. And I must say I feel a little presumptuous to shoot for that. But that's the goal, like a hockey goal. I figure I've got a choice ... not of the outcome but of the objective. And my objective is that one performance."
Peppard returned to television to do Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre, "The Game with Glass Pieces". In March 1964 he tried to break his MGM contract to make The Great Adventure for Anthony Mann.
For MGM, he appeared in Operation Crossbow (1965), a war film with Sophia Loren. It was the first film he made under a new contract with MGM to do one movie a year for three years.
He was meant to follow this with an adaptation of the play Merrily We Roll Along but it was never made.
"I'm an actor not a star," he said around this time, adding that he looked for "three things" in a film, "a good director, a good part and a good script. If I get two out of three of those I'm satisfied." Peppard said when he made the film "I wasn't just broke I was up to my ears in debt." He was cast as the lead in Sands of the Kalahari (1965) at a fee of $200,000 but walked off the set after only a few days of filming in March 1965 and had to be replaced by Stuart Whitman. Paramount sued Peppard for $930,555 in damages and he countersued.
Ashley later wrote:
He had a huge hit with The Blue Max (1966), playing a German World War One ace, alongside James Mason and Ursula Andress, directed by John Guillermin.
Film critic David Shipman writes of this stage in his career: