A Fox Exec Tried To Pay $25K To Shave Gregory Peck's Face For The Gunfighter

One could probably write a fairly substantial tome on the history of mustaches in Hollywood. Nothing seems to court controversy in the film industry quite like a hirsute upper lip. Modern audiences will no doubt jump to Henry Cavill's magnificent "Mission: Impossible — Fallout" 'tache, which received a touching obituary on this very site back in 2018 after Cavill shaved it off. That particularly controversial cookie duster caused no shortage of issues for Joss Whedon and his reshoots of "Justice League," which infamously included a shot of Cavill with a shoddily-rendered, CGI bald upper lip. But that's just the latest mustache-related debacle to befall Hollywood.

Back in 1978, Gene Hackman had to be duped into shaving his mustache for "Superman," by a particularly crafty Richard Donner. Then, in the 90s, Kurt Russell went over-the-top with his "Tombstone" mustache, prompting director George P. Cosmatos to negotiate with the actor over the exact, historically-accurate proportions of his facial hair.

But neither of these two examples were anywhere near as controversial as Gregory Peck's mustache in 1950's "The Gunfighter." Very much the Cavill mustache controversy of its day, this facial hair fiasco might well have cost 20th Century Fox, as it was known at the time, millions — at least, according to the head of the studio.

Directed by Henry King, "The Gunfighter" was met with decent reviews upon its release and has come to be seen as a classic of the Western genre in the decades since. Sadly, it also managed to lose 20th Century Fox (now 20th Century Studios following the Disney/Fox merger of 2019) some money at the box office, much to the chagrin of the studio chief. Darryl F. Zanuck, who throughout his long career in Hollywood proudly sported a mustache of his own, was evidently none-too-pleased that Gregory Peck, beloved Hollywood megastar, had hidden his million-dollar face behind what was, in all fairness, a fairly minor mustache.

In "The Gunfighter," Peck, who'd go on to lead multiple other Henry King features from "David and Bathsheba" (1951) to "Beloved Infidel" (1959), played the role of legendary gunslinger Jimmy Ringo, who's infamy prevented him from ever leading a quiet life. In the film, Jimmy visits the town of Cayenne hoping to reconnect with his estranged wife and son, only to set off a series of events that ultimately sees the "fastest gun in the West” slain by a budding gunfighter named Hunt Bromley (Skip Homeier). To portray this renowned outlaw, Peck evidently felt a mustache was in order, and King agreed.

In the 2021 book, "20th Century-Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Creation of the Modern Film Studio," author Scott Eyman describes Zanuck as someone who paid meticulous attention to detail. When it came to "The Gunfighter," one particular detail, Peck's mustache, proved too much for the studio head. It's a shame, then, that Zanuck happened to be out of the country while the film was being shot.

Unlike today, when movie stars flaunt mustaches with pride, back in the 1950s cultural standards dictated that such garish facial adornments were for beatniks and dropouts — and Darryl F. Zanuck, apparently. In other words, mustaches were not treated with quite the same reverence as Henry Cavill's majestic facial mane was in the 2010s. As such, giving the clean-cut Gregory Peck a mustache was a genuine concern for Zanuck. It didn't matter whether it was period-accurate or not, the 20th Century Fox exec was concerned with what the contemporary masses would make of the offending facial hair. Sadly, he wasn't around to do anything about it, having left the U.S. long enough for Henry King and co. to film "The Gunfighter" without him. As Scott Eyman writes:

"When [Zanuck] came back to town and saw the large mustache that King and Peck had chosen for Peck's character, his heart sank. He told Henry King, 'I would give $25,000 of my own money to get that mustache off Peck.'"

As Eyman recounts, Zanuck wrote producer Nunnally Johnson in July of 1950 — one month after "The Gunfighter" hit theaters — and claimed, "We will be lucky if we do seventy or seventy-five percent of the business we did on Yellow Sky" — a previous Fox western led by Peck. Zanuck added, "It will be a profit-making picture but certainly nothing like we had every right to anticipate." It turns out that Zanuck was right. The film did not see the kind of box office returns 20th Century Fox had hoped for, and according to the studio chief, that was down to several factors. But none of them, it seems, were as crucial to the film's anticlimactic box office performance as Peck's mustache.

In his memo to Nunnally Johnson, Darryl F. Zanuck wrote that "The Gunfighter" "violates so many true Western traditions that it goes over the heads of the type of people who patronize Westerns and there are not enough of the others to give us the top business we anticipated." That may have been true, but in Zanuck's eyes, the subversion of Western tropes was inconsequential in comparison to the real culprit behind the film's lackluster box office: Gregory Peck's mustache.

As Scott Eyman writes in "20th Century-Fox," Zanuck also "quoted the remarks overheard by an usher at Radio City Music Hall: 'If they wanted an ugly man, why didn't they take an ugly actor? Why waste Peck?'" According to the studio chief, this comment "occurred hundreds of times, particularly from women and young girls."

All of which might make you feel a tad sorry for Zanuck and his under-appreciated Western. But not only is the film now seen as one of the best Western movies ever made, it's worth noting that Zanuck himself was essentially the Harvey Weinstein of his day. A Daily Beast article even cites Zanuck as the originator of the dreaded casting couch culture, while The New York Times claims he had an unfortunate and "well-documented" penchant for flashing women. With that in mind, it's a darn good thing that Zanuck wasn't around to exert any influence over the filming of "The Gunfighter," and Gregory Peck keeping his mustache is the least of it.