Once you see something it's easy to see it, and it's tough to forget how hard it was to see it in the first place.

I thought my “Find the Future Movie Star” post was easy, for example, because, once I knew, my eyes always went right to this kid, and he looked a lot like his future movie-star self.

But I linked to the post via Facebook and immediately got the following guesses:

• Jack Nicholson, bottom row
• Jimmy Stewart, middle?
• James Cagney, first row, third from left
• Marilyn Monroe, somewhere
• Clint Eastwood, front row, third from left
• Jack Nicholson, second row, far right
• Clark Gable, back row, first on left
• Spencer Tracy, third row middle
• John Wayne? Up towards the top? Blondie?
• Got it. Paul Newman.
• Gary Cooper, top left for the block

Eventually Sasha Stone of Awards Daily got it. It's Gregory Peck. (Click on pic for bigger version.)

Sasha guessed wrong several times, too, but once she saw it she really saw it. “He looks the same!!” she wrote. My friend Colleen added, “Lots of little boys scowling, but not Peck!” Peck's good boy, I guess.

It is startling. Everyone around him looks like one of the dead-end kids, and there he is in the back row, about the handsomest second-grader ever.

Tags: Gregory Peck