 Gregory Peck starred in the film version, directed by Elia Kazan, which won the Academy Award for best picture.Beginning the early 1980s, Darien High School and neighboring New Canaan High School took part in the A Better Chance (ABC), a program that sends about 500 minority teenagers per year to prep schools and affluent suburban high schools to prepare them to enter superior colleges.On September 11, 2001, six Darien residents died in the terrorist attacks.