The Great Gregory Peck has died at 87... Atticus Finch is no more.

Father Geek here with sad, sad news... one of Hollywood's greatest has passed away today. Funny how these tragedies happen... I was at Best Buy a little while ago looking for some DVD's to bring home and I spotted PORK CHOP HILL... in my opinion probably the BEST Korean Ground War flick ever made... it was on sale for $6, soooooo I snatched it up without thinking twice. I get home and begin to check Email and what do I see... that movie's star, Lt. Joe Clemons (Peck) has died. It hit me like a rock between the eyes. Sure he was in his late eighties like my Dad who died last year, but you just don't think about them leaving us. Sure its the way of things, but it still comes as a shock. Everytime!

Harry and I saw and visited some with him a few years back here in Austin and I'll never forget that experience, or the 1st time I saw MOBY DICK at the Majestic theater in San Antonio as a kid, or when I saw SPELLBOUND years later in film school, or when my Dad took my Boy Scout unit to see 12 O'CLOCK HIGH at Lackland Air Force Base then took us all for a 3 hour ride in an old WWII bomber, or when my Grandmother Knowles took me to see DUEL IN THE SUN at Beaumont's Liberty Theater, or when my Uncle Fred took me to experience PORK CHOP HILL in 1959 also at The Liberty.

PECK was an actor's actor annnnnd he made outstanding, no, make that GREAT motion pictures. He gave us a huge catalogue of films and characters that will live forever, like TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, THE GUNS OF NAVARONE, THE STALKING MOON, CAPE FEAR, THE BRAVADOS, THE OMEN, and dozens and dozens more. He made important films with important messages like ON THE BEACH, GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT and the previously mentioned MOCKINGBIRD. The world is truly a poorer place without his talent, his spirit, his shining example to help us through the darker times. He will be missed greatly here at Geek Headquarters and around the world...

Here's what MSNBC's staff put together today...

PECK DIED overnight, Monroe Friedman said. Peck’s craggy good looks, grace and measured speech contributed to his screen image as the decent, courageous man of action. According to the Internet Movie Database, Peck was studying pre-med at Berkeley when he was bitten by the acting bug and changed careers. Shortly after college graduation, he debuted on Broadway, next moving to Hollywood.

From his film debut in 1944 with “Days of Glory,” he was never less than a star. He was nominated for an Oscar five times, and his range of roles was astonishing. He portrayed a priest in “Keys of the Kingdom,” combat heroes in “Twelve O’Clock High” and “Pork Chop Hill,” Westerners in “Yellow Sky” and “The Gunfighter,” a romantic in “Roman Holiday.” His commanding presence suited him for legendary characters: King David in “David and Bathsheba,” sea captains in “Captain Horatio Hornblower” and “Moby Dick,” F. Scott Fitzgerald in “Beloved Infidel,” the war leader “MacArthur,” and Abraham Lincoln in the TV miniseries “The Blue and the Grey.”

Peck’s rare attempts at unsympathetic roles usually failed. He played the renegade son in the Western “Duel in the Son” and the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele in “The Boys from Brazil.”

Off-screen as well as on, Peck conveyed a quiet dignity. He had one amicable divorce, and scandal never touched him. He served as president of the Motion Picture Academy and was active in the Motion Picture and Television Fund, American Cancer Society, National Endowment for the Arts and other causes.

“I’m not a do-gooder,” he insisted after learning of the Academy’s Jean Hersholt humanitarian award in 1968. “It embarrassed me to be classified as a humanitarian. I simply take part in activities that I believe in.”

Peck died at his Los Angeles home overnight, with his wife, Veronique, at his side, Friedman said.

“She told me very briefly that he died peacefully. She was with him, holding his hand, and he just went to sleep,” Friedman said. “He had just been getting older and more fragile. He wasn’t really ill. He just sort of ran his course and died of old age.”

During his first five years in films, Peck scored four Academy Award nominations as best actor: “Keys of the Kingdom” (1944), “The Yearling” (1946), “Gentleman’s Agreement” (1947), “Twelve O’Clock High” (1949). “Gentleman’s Agreement,” in which he played a magazine writer who poses as a Jew to expose anti-Semitism, was considered a daring film in its time. Peck commented in 1971 that his agent cautioned him: “You’re just establishing yourself, and a lot of people will resent the picture. Anti-Semitism runs very deep in this country.”

Peck ignored his advice. “Gentleman’s Agreement” proved a moneymaker and won the Oscar as best picture. The actor listed “Gentleman’s Agreement” among his favorites of his movies. The others: the sea adventure “Captain Horatio Hornblower”; “Roman Holiday” in which he played a reporter to Audrey Hepburn’s princess; “The Guns of Navarone” (“good, all-out entertainment, though it’s really a comedy”); and “To Kill a Mockingbird” - for which he won the 1962 Oscar as best actor. He played Atticus Finch, a small-town Southern lawyer who defies public sentiment to defend a black man accused of rape.

“I put everything I had into it - all my feelings and everything I’d learned in 46 years of living, about family life and fathers and children,” he remarked in 1989. “And my feelings about racial justice and inequality and opportunity.”

In 2003, an American Film Institute listing of the top heroes in film history ranked Peck’s Finch as No. 1.

In his 60s and 70s, movie roles grew sparse. He appeared as a U.S. president in “Amazing Grace and Chuck” (1987), maverick author Ambrose Bierce in “Old Gringo” (1989) and as a humane company owner victimized by a hostile takeover in “Other People’s Money” (1991).

In 1993 he starred in a made-for-TV movie, “The Portrait,” with Lauren Bacall, his co-star of “Designing Woman” (1957), and his daughter Cecilia.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Father Geek back Just Click Here To Get A List of His Film Achievments.