Throughout his career, he often portrayed protagonists with "fiber" within a moral setting. "Gentleman's Agreement" (1947) centered on topics of antisemitism, while Peck's character in "Twelve O'Clock High" (1949) dealt with post-traumatic stress disorder during World War II. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962), an adaptation of the modern classic of the same name which revolved around racial inequality, for which he received universal acclaim. In 1983, he starred opposite Christopher Plummer in "The Scarlet and The Black" as Hugh O'Flaherty, a Catholic priest who saved thousands of escaped Allied POWs and Jewish people in Rome during the Second World War.