The Oscar-winning actor Gregory Peck, perhaps best known for his dignified portrayal of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird , originally hails from the San Diego area. On April 5, 1916, he was born in a bungalow in La Jolla that his father had built for $4,000. According to the biography Gregory Peck by Michael Freedland , Peck, in his early childhood, lived an “idyllic life” on the West Coast. His cousins lived nearby, and his father owned a drugstore in the area. That all ended with his parents’ divorce when Peck was just five or six. He briefly moved to St. Louis, Missouri, with his mother, where they lived in a boarding house, and also lived with his grandmother in La Jolla. At age 10 he was sent to a Catholic boarding school in Los Angeles, but it wasn't until he was a premed student at the University of California Berkeley that he started performing in plays and discovered his passion for acting.…