In Memory of George Peppard ('Breakfast at Tiffany's'/'The A-Team'): 30 Years After His Tragic Death

Photo byPinterest.com

It’s been thirty years since charismatic actor George Peppard died from pneumonia. Best known for feature films like The Strange One (1957) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Peppard went on to find fame on the small screen with two NBC shows Banecek (1972–1974) and The A-Team (1983–1987). This is his his story.

A Closer Look

George Peppard was born on October 1, 1928, in Detroit, Michigan, the son of building contractor George Peppard, Sr., and music vocal instructor Vernelle Rohrer Peppard. After the Peppard family lost their money during the Depression, his father left George and his mother in Detroit to seek employment.

In 1946, after graduating from Dearborn High School, Peppard enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. He rose to the rank of corporal and left the Corps in January 1948.

For the rest of that year and on into 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 became interested in acting, then transferred to Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1955.

He also trained at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, in Pittsburgh, PA, worked as a radio DJ at WLOA in Braddock, PA., and was a pilot.

Big Screen Debut

Following several Broadway and TV appearances, Peppard made his movie debut in The Strange One, and quite a splash as Robert Mitchum’s illegitimate son in the popular melodrama Home from the Hill (1960).

One year later, Peppard delivered his most memorable big-screen performance as Audrey Hepburn’s love interest in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Although, the two actors did not get along off-screen.

As journalist David Shipman of The Independent once observed, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s seemed a sophisticated piece when it came out in 1961, directed by Blake Edwards and written by George Axelrod from the novella by Truman Capote. The sexually ambiguous ‘I’ of the story, the struggling writer based on Capote himself, had become a full-blooded practicing heterosexual — involved with a lady known only as ‘2E’ (played by Patricia Neal), who leaves him dollars 300 on the bedside table after their rendezvous. To the strains of ‘Moon River,’ he gives her up for Holly Golightly, who is played by Audrey Hepburn.

"George Peppard played…the all-American boy gone to seed who rediscovers Real Values when he finds true love. Peppard himself had no difficulty in hinting at the decadence of the character, and indeed in his first film he had played a first-year student at a military academy which was a hotbed of perversion and corruption — The Strange One, adapted from Calder Willingham’s novel End as a Man. Peppard played a victim, but there was a glint in the eye, a flick of the tongue, which suggested that he could not wait to be the next school bully. He continued to be promising in his next few films, and something more than that in Home from the Hill (1959), as the hero’s illegitimate brother, investing his scenes with warmth and humor.”

The Big Picture

Perceived by Hollywood studio executives as a promising young star, George Peppard was subsequently cast in some of the major blockbusters of the early/mid-1960s: How the West Was Won (1962), The Victors (1963), The Carpetbaggers (1964), and more.

By the late 1960s, however, Peppard began appearing in less-prestigious movies such as House of Cards (1968), and Cannon for Cordoba (1970).

In the early 1970s, he regained a measure of fame by way of the small screen and the weekly adventure series, Banacek.

In the mid-1980s, he once more returned to TV as Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith, the cigar-chomping leader of The A-Team (1983).

On May 8, 1994, Peppard died at age 65 of pneumonia in Los Angeles, California, though he is buried alongside his parents in Northview Cemetery in Dearborn, Michigan.