73 Facts About George Peppard

George Peppard secured a major role as struggling writer Paul Varjak when he starred alongside Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, and later portrayed a character based on Howard Hughes in The Carpetbaggers.

George Peppard's family lost all their money in the Depression, and his father had to leave George and his mother in Detroit while he went looking for work.

George Peppard graduated from Dearborn High School in Dearborn, Michigan in 1946.

George Peppard became interested in acting, being an admirer of Walter Huston in particular.

George Peppard then transferred to Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1955.

George Peppard spent a portion of his 1966 honeymoon training to fly his Learjet in Wichita, Kansas.

George Peppard made his stage debut in 1949 at the Pittsburgh Playhouse.

George Peppard 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.

George Peppard worked in summer stock in New England and appeared at the open air Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon for two seasons.

George Peppard worked as a cab driver until getting his first part in "Lamp Unto My Feet".

George Peppard appeared with Paul Newman, in The United States Steel Hour, as the singing, guitar-playing baseball player Piney Woods in Bang the Drum Slowly, directed by Daniel Petrie.

George Peppard appeared in an episode of Kraft Theatre, "Flying Object at Three O'Clock High".

George Peppard played a key role in Little Moon of Alban alongside Christopher Plummer for the Hallmark Hall of Fame.

In May 1958, George Peppard played his second film role, a support part in the Korean War movie Pork Chop Hill directed by Lewis Milestone.

George Peppard was cast in part because he was unfamiliar to moviegoers.

In October 1958 George Peppard appeared on Broadway in The Pleasure of His Company starring Cyril Ritchard, who directed.

George Peppard played the boyfriend who wants to marry Dolores Hart who was Ritchard's daughter; The New York Times called George Peppard "admirable".

In February 1959, Hedda Hopper announced George Peppard would leave Company to make two films for MGM.

George Peppard had meant to follow The Subterraneans by returning to Broadway with Julie Harris in The Warm Peninsular but this did not happen.

George Peppard returned to television to star in an episode of the anthology series Startime, "Incident at a Corner" under the direction of Alfred Hitchcock alongside Vera Miles.

George Peppard played Teddy Roosevelt on television in an episode of Our American Heritage, "The Invincible Teddy".

George Peppard's 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 George Peppard, but was overruled by the producers.

George Peppard was meant to appear in Unarmed in Paradise which was not made.

George Peppard bought a script by Robert Blees called Baby Talk but it was unmade.

George Peppard followed this with a war story for Carl Foreman, The Victors, made in Europe.

George Peppard was offered $200,000 to appear in The Long Ships but did not want to go to Yugoslavia for six months.

George Peppard was going to do Next Time We Love with Ross Hunter but it was never made.

George Peppard starred in The Carpetbaggers, a 150-minute saga of a ruthless, 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 George Peppard during filming and later married him.

George Peppard felt that as an above-the-title star he had the responsibility to use his muscle and power to try and make it better and that has never stopped in him.

George Peppard was unrelenting about it, to the point where a lot of executives and directors came to feel he was a pain in the ass.

George Peppard returned to television to do Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre, "The Game with Glass Pieces".

George Peppard was meant to follow this with an adaptation of the play Merrily We Roll Along but it was never made.

George Peppard starred in a thriller, The Third Day with Ashley who had become his second wife.

George Peppard was announced for The Last Night of Don Juan for Michael Gordon but it was not made.

George Peppard was cast as the lead in Sands of the Kalahari 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.

George Peppard did not start off as an untalented pretty nothing who had to be grateful for any piece of meat that was thrown his way.

George Peppard was intelligent and talented but because he was six foot tall with blond hair and blue eyes he had been put in the slot of being a movie star at a time when the movie studios were still very powerful and expected you to play the game by their rules.

George Peppard had a huge hit with The Blue Max, playing a German World War One ace, alongside James Mason and Ursula Andress, directed by John Guillermin.

George Peppard might have been the Alan Ladd or the Richard Widmark of the sixties: but the sixties didn't want a new Alan Ladd.

George Peppard played a German Jew fighting for the Allies in Tobruk alongside Rock Hudson.

George Peppard claimed Peppard turned down The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter because he did not want to play a weak or possibly homosexual character.

In Cannon for Cordoba, George Peppard played the steely Captain Rod Douglas, who has been put in charge of gathering a group of soldiers on a dangerous mission into Mexico.

In March 1971 George Peppard announced that his company, Tradewind Productions, had optioned a novel by Stanley Ellin, The Eighth Circle, but it was not made.

George Peppard starred in a Western TV movie The Bravos with Pernell Roberts.

George Peppard returned to features with The Groundstar Conspiracy co starring Michael Sarrazin, shot in Canada for Universal; Peppard's fee was $400,000.

George Peppard starred in Newman's Law, an action film originally called Newman.

When Banacek ended George Peppard wanted to take time off to focus on producing and directing, including a project called The Total Beast.

George Peppard made some TV movies One of Our Own, a medical drama, and Guilty or Innocent: The Sam Sheppard Murder Case, as Sam Sheppard, for which his fee was $100,000.

George Peppard starred in the science-fiction film Damnation Alley, which has gone on to attain a substantial cult following in the years since.

The movie cost $8.5 million - George Peppard said Jack Smight's original directors cut was "wonderful" but claimed many of the key scenes in the film were cut when it was re-edited by executives.

George Peppard later said the low point of his career came over a three-year period around the time of Five Days from Home.

George Peppard had to sell his car and take out a second mortgage on his home to finance Five Days from Home.

George Peppard had the lead in the TV movies Crisis in Mid-air and Torn Between Two Lovers and went to Europe for From Hell to Victory.

Out of five shows, the first was never broadcast on NBC, but aired much later on GSN and Buzzr, because of on-camera comments made by George Peppard regarding personal dissatisfaction he felt related to his treatment by the NBC officials who supervised the production of Password Plus.

In 1980, George Peppard was offered, and accepted, the role of Blake Carrington in the television series Dynasty.

Three weeks later, before filming was to begin on additional episodes, George Peppard was fired and the part was offered to John Forsythe; the scenes with George Peppard were re-shot and Forsythe became the permanent star of the show.

George Peppard travelled to Canada to make Your Ticket Is No Longer Valid with Richard Harris, to New Zealand for Race for the Yankee Zephyr and Spain for Hit Man.

In 1982, George Peppard auditioned for and won the role of Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith in the television action adventure series The A-Team, acting alongside Mr T, Dirk Benedict and Dwight Schultz.

The series, which ran for five seasons on NBC from 1983 to 1987, made George Peppard known to a new generation and is arguably his best-known role.

George Peppard said "the first year of the show "it was kind of like Monty Python - absolutely ridiculous.

Peppard was reportedly annoyed by Mr T upstaging him in his public image, and at one point in their relationship, refused to speak directly to Mr T Instead, he sent messages through intermediaries, and for this, Peppard was occasionally portrayed by the press as not a team player.

Melinda Culea claimed it was George Peppard who got her fired after the first season.

George Peppard appeared in Silence Like Glass and Night of the Fox.

George Peppard was married five times and was the father of three children.

George Peppard resided in a Greek revival-style white cottage in Hollywood Hills, California, until the time of his death.

George Peppard's home featured elegant porches on three sides and a guest house in the back.

George Peppard overcame a serious alcohol problem in 1978, after which he became deeply involved in helping other alcoholics.

George Peppard had smoked three packs of cigarettes a day for most of his life.

On May 8,1994, still battling lung cancer, George Peppard died from pneumonia in Los Angeles.

George Peppard, born and raised in Dearborn, Michigan, was one of Dearborn's most famous residents, after Ford Motor Company founder Henry Ford and legendary long-serving Congressman John Dingell.

George Peppard was buried simply and plainly with his mother and father in his home town's Northview Cemetery, as he had wished.