You want handsome? You want class? You want a gentleman among gentlemen? All hail Gregory Peck, who’ll be 87 on April 5. He’s among the best-loved of all Hollywood actors, by his colleagues and by the public, and he stars, with Audrey Hepburn, in the wonderful (and wise) romantic comedy Roman Holiday (1953), which is showing in a newly restored 35mm print at the Brattle this weekend, January 24-26, in celebration of its 50th birthday.

Urged on by the actor’s daughter, Cecilia, Harlan County, USA filmmaker Barbara Kopple made a documentary about Peck several years ago, mixing interviews with scenes of his charming one-man stage show. She found no secret Peck: he was as kind and humane in person as he seems on screen. "For me, he is the Atticus Finch character in To Kill a Mockingbird," she says. "It’s a film about ethics and social justice, which shows him to be a wonderful father. Peck speaks out on the gun-control issue. He does it with finesse and dignity, and people listen."

Was there anything on the cutting-room floor of Peck losing his temper? "No, never! He’s a very private person, but he liked our crew, and trusted us. The only thing he felt uncomfortable about was that he can’t walk so well anymore. He’s a tall man, and he was touchy about us filming him walking and trying to get somewhere."

Half a century ago, Peck was, at 37, an agile screen match for the elegant 23-year-old Audrey Hepburn, and this huge Hollywood name was so courtly that he allowed filmmaker William Wyler to give Hepburn the moving, expressive close-ups that led to her winning an Academy Award for her first major role. In the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, Hepburn plays Princess Ann, heir to the throne of an unspecified European country. She’s on a good-will tour of the continent, but the endless receptions and press conferences have her on the verge of a nervous breakdown. So when the entourage arrives in Rome, she flees her palatial residence and, without revealing her royal identity, hooks up with a normal American guy, Joe Bradley (Peck), whom she meets on the street. She doesn’t know he’s a journalist. When he figures out who she is, he promises his editor a scoop. Meanwhile, of course, they’re falling in love. Will he sell her out to his tabloid-minded newspaper?

Roman Holiday owes its set-up to the 1934 screwball classic It Happened One Night. In each case, a runaway rich girl meets up with a pragmatic, seemingly amoral newspaperman. Romance ensues. She finds fun among the common people, and he discovers he’s got a heart and scruples. It Happened One Night is the funnier of the two movies, and with a satisfying if predictable comedy conclusion. Roman Holiday is enjoyably inconsequential throughout, but just when you’re ready for the heartwarming commoner-gets-princess ending (a perfectly reasonable expectation given the appealing leads), there’s a jolt. The last 10 minutes of Roman Holiday are something special. Will Hepburn’s princess return to the throne? Or will she abandon it all and leap into the adoring arms of Peck’s regular Joe?

Although Roman Holiday is 50 years old, you won’t find me giving away the astonishing ending. William Wyler, who was among the most tasteful of studio filmmakers (A Place in the Sun, The Best Years of Our Lives, etc.), is responsible also for Detective Story (1951), an entertaining Kirk Douglas vehicle that’ll screen January 27 in the Brattle’s " ’50s Film Noir" Monday series. It’s from a Broadway play by Sidney Kingsley, whose Men in White was famous in the 1930s for purporting to show how doctors really talked and acted while on duty at a hospital. Dead End, which is set in an East River tenement, had its youthful cast swimming in the water-filled orchestra pit during its Broadway run. (I had a professor who fondly remembered getting splashed on during a matinee.)

Detective Story is set in a police station where we watch cops interact with suspects, crooks, lawyers, etc. as Kingsley shows us how detectives really do it. Here, dimple-chinned Douglas goes wild as McLeod, a criminal-hating fuzz with a Dirty Harry temper and temperament who resents his bosses for going easy on lawbreakers. The most melodramatic section of Detective Story is also the most surprising. What other 1950s movie is totally sympathetic to a woman — Mrs. McLeod (Eleanor Parker) — who, it is revealed, once had a baby out of wedlock? And who now expects her cretin husband — he has just discovered with horror that another man got her pregnant — to forgive and forget?

Gerald Peary can be reached at gpeary@world.std.com