Film & TV / Theatre & dance
George Peppard
1928–1994 · actor
Breakfast at Tiffany's leading man and The A-Team's Hannibal Smith, born in Detroit, raised in Dearborn and buried there beside his parents.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Los Angeles, California
aged 65- Birth name
- George Peppard Jr.
- Detroit years
- 1928–1946
- Field
- Film & TV, Theatre & dance
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
George Peppard was born in Detroit in 1928, the son of a building contractor and a voice teacher. The Depression wiped out the family's money, and his father left to look for work while George and his mother stayed behind in Detroit. He grew up in the suburb of Dearborn and graduated from Dearborn High School in 1946, then served in the Marine Corps and studied civil engineering at Purdue before switching to drama at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh. After stage work in New York he broke through as the writer Paul Varjak opposite Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) and starred in The Carpetbaggers (1964). Television brought him the insurance sleuth Banacek in the 1970s and, from 1983, the cigar-chomping Col. John "Hannibal" Smith of The A-Team. He died in Los Angeles in 1994 and was brought home to be buried with his parents in Dearborn's Northview Cemetery.
Highlights
- Paul Varjak in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
- Col. John "Hannibal" Smith in The A-Team (1983–1987)
- Title role in the mystery series Banacek (1972–1974)
- Dearborn High School class of 1946; buried in Dearborn
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · until 1946
Dearborn High School
Peppard graduated in 1946, when the school stood at Mason Street and Garrison Avenue in downtown Dearborn; it moved to its Outer Drive campus in 1956.
Buried here · 1994
Northview Cemetery
Dearborn's largest cemetery, where Peppard is buried alongside his parents.