Taxi Talks, which came from the husband-and-wife team of Frederick and Fanny Hatton, was an exercise in modern slang as observed in the back seat of a taxi cab. The Hattons wrote it for producer Rosalie Stewart, who subsequently released it to vaudeville. Vitaphone paid $2,000 for the picture rights—absolute top dollar for a fourteen-minute short—and cast it with Broadway luminaries Katherine Alexander (currently in The Boundary Line at the 48th Street Theatre), Mayo Methot (who had just closed in Sidney Howard’s Half Gods), Roger Pryor (of the hit comedy Apron Strings), and Tracy, none of whom had ever before appeared in a film.
The process of making Taxi Talks was relatively painless. For Tracy, it involved traveling to Brooklyn on March 3, 1930. The action took place almost entirely in the cab, Alexander, as a gangster’s moll, slipping in beside him just as it pulls away from the curb. Tracy’s role, a “gunman” as specified in his contract, was opposite his old girl, the only dramatic segment of an otherwise smart and breezy comedy. “What have I done to make you want to leave me?” the girl implores. “Me, that would die for you?”
“You ain’t done nothin’,” he tells her. “I’m just tired of you, that’s all. I want to get me a new gal … and I’m going to get me one with some spunk and class.”
She threatens to “fix” the other woman. “I’ll put her where she won’t run after you … I know a lot about her … Plenty to put her in hock, and I’ll do it too!”
“You never meant a thing to me,” he tells her finally. “I’d given you up a long time ago, only you were useful. Yeah, and cut out all the talk about suicide, too. Say listen, I never cared for you the way I do for this woman—she’s the only woman in the world I ever wanted, see? Yeah, and she’s mine …”
Unable to take it anymore, the moll grabs a knife and shoves it deep into his stomach. “You got me!” he gasps. “Well … do something … can’t you? I’m dizzy … I’m … you dirty little hell cat, you’ve croaked me! You’ll … you …”
“Joe …” she calls frantically. “I didn’t mean to do it … Joe … Joe … Oh … Oh God! Joe! I didn’t mean to do it—I didn’t mean to do it! Stop this taxi … stop it I say!”
The driver looks back over his shoulder, apparently not having noticed any of it. “What’s the matter? HOLY—GEE!”
“You better drive to the nearest police station,” she somberly tells him. “I just killed a man.”
Covered by two elaborately blimped cameras, the scene consumed roughly four minutes of screen time, and it is unlikely that Tracy and Alexander, even allowing for false starts and technical malfunctions, needed more than an hour or two to complete it. “It was all strange and new and uncomfortable and rather embarrassing,” Alexander said, “but, honestly, playing even the shortest scene with [Tracy] there was simply no question that he was a brilliant actor.” For an afternoon’s work Tracy collected $150 and was back at the Lambs by nightfall. The thing he would remember most vividly about the experience was the makeup they made him wear, as he was by then used to wearing none at all in his role as Killer Mears. Perversely, the only cast member signed as a result of Taxi Talks was Evelyn Knapp, a young actress who had no Broadway credits whatsoever.
The Last Mile continued to be an important show, outlasting The Criminal Code and seemingly set for the balance of the season. (Even the ticket brokers eventually came around and made an eight-week buy on seats.) In Hollywood, the success of both plays did not go unnoticed. The picture rights were snapped up, and M-G-M began filming its own prison melodrama, The Big House, with Martin Flavin, author of The Criminal Code, on hand to punch up the dialogue. John Wexley was similarly courted by Universal, and at Fox, generally the most derivative of the major studios, an original screenplay was commissioned from Maurine Watkins, author of the racy Jazz Age satire Chicago. Based in New York, Watkins naturally chose Sing Sing as the backdrop for her story, the nineteenth-century prison at Ossining—on the Hudson some forty miles north of Manhattan—being famous for the progressive policies of Warden Lewis E. Lawes, an author, lecturer, and death penalty opponent who had just recently made the cover of Time magazine. Unlike Wexley, Watkins had a firm and obvious title before writing a single word: Up the River.
John Ford, assigned to direct the film, was brought in from Los Angeles to “assess the new plays and scout young actors.” The next picture on his schedule being a prison yarn, he naturally arranged to see The Last Mile on his first night in town. “I liked it so much,” he remembered, “that I went back the next night and was tantalized by Spence. I began to see that he had it all—the consummate power of an actor. So, hell, I went a third time, and introduced myself to Spence backstage. He took me to the Lambs Club for what turned out to be quite an evening. We stayed until about four o’clock, when I think they threw us out. Most of the time we only talked baseball, but I liked Spence so much I knew I had to have him in my next picture, whether it was Up the River or something else. The way it turned out, I was supposed to see six plays in six nights, but I saw The Last Mile every night I was there.”
Ford, a crusty Irishman, was directing Harry Carey westerns when Tracy was still cadging dimes from his father to go see them. “I’d meet Spencer after the show and we’d go over to the Lambs Club and drink ale. In those days we could both drink pretty well after a fashion.” The management at Fox, Ford discovered, did not share his enthusiasm for Spencer Tracy. As Tracy described the scene: “Ford said, ‘I’d like to have him,’ and the Fox guy said, ‘Well, we made tests of him. They’re not very good. He looks lousy in makeup.’ Ford said, ‘Makeup? He’s not going to wear any makeup in my picture. He’s the guy I want.’ When we got out of the office, he told me how much money to ask for.”
While all the head scratching was taking place over on Tenth Avenue, Sam Sax, the newly appointed production chief at Vitaphone, took the opportunity to contract with Tracy for a second short. In the six weeks since they had filmed Taxi Talks, staffing at Warners’ Brooklyn studio had been beefed up to the point where it constituted the largest production force in the nation devoted solely to one- and two-reelers. Sax now had four directors and a staff of five writers churning out playlets, flash acts, musical comedies, and miniature revues in a general attempt to escape the old stigma of vaudeville. Sax had a story called The Hard Guy, a seriocomic sketch with a trick finish, and he doubled Tracy’s original fee to get him to do it. There was an element of brinkmanship in the offer, for The Hard Guy was filmed under Arthur Hurley’s direction on Monday, May 5, 1930, with the supposition that an offer from Warner Bros. would soon be forthcoming. Fox signed Tracy to a one-picture contract the very next day.
Tracy, Valli Roberts, and Katherine Alexander in The Hard Guy. (PATRICIA MAHON COLLECTION)
Ford had persuaded Winfield R. Sheehan, general manager of the Fox studio, to take a flyer on Tracy. Sheehan, aligned with AT&T and the banking interests that controlled Fox, was locked in a protracted litigation with founder William Fox over leadership of the company, and was stuck in New York while the battle played itself out. He may well have seen The Last Mile for himself, for he had plenty of opportunity, and it would have been the experience of seeing Tracy live—and not in his abortive Movietone test—that convinced him to let Ford have his way.3 Fox was adding stage-trained actors to the payroll at a furious rate, and during Sheehan’s six-month stay at the Hotel Savoy, Humphrey Bogart, George Brent, Robert (later Bob) Burns, Larry Fine, Ted Heeley, Rose Hobart, Harry (later Moe) Howard, Shemp Howard, Elizabeth and Helen Keating, Nat Pendleton, Tyrone Power, John Swor, Ruth Warren, and Charles Winninger were all signed to contracts. That Tracy was practically an afterthought, engaged just days before Sheehan’s return to California, is supported by the somewhat bewildering way in which he was approached.
“The producer,” said Tracy,
was well known, the theater was well known, and I was sufficiently well known so that nobody could possibly have had any difficulty in getting in touch with me. They could have reached me through the produc
er, they could easily have found out where I lived, they could have reached me at the Lambs Club, or by the simple process of coming back stage after the show. But what they did was to get hold of an agent. They told him they wanted me for a part in Up the River and he called me up on the telephone. When I went over to the Fox offices, everything was cut and dried. Jack Ford was determined to have me for the part, and they had decided exactly what contract they would offer me. The agent sat in the next room while I talked to them. He had nothing whatever to do with the negotiations.
The agent was one Leo Morrison, late of the United Booking Office, a powerful presence in vaudeville who brought the first large contingent of New York stage actors to talking pictures in 1928. Morrison had offices in both New York and Hollywood (where he occupied the mezzanine level at the Roosevelt Hotel) and vague ties to Winnie Sheehan, who, with his Tammany background, would have expected him to play ball. Morrison later claimed to have seen Tracy in The Last Mile, and he may well have been the one who first alerted Fox to Tracy’s nascent appeal. It is just as possible, however, that Tracy was delivered to Morrison in payment for a favor of some kind, or that Morrison would be paying someone a kickback on the commission.
Morrison had other clients at Fox, notably Mae Clarke, Beatrice Lillie, Ruth Warren, Rose Hobart, and Leo Carrillo. The contract Tracy signed employed him for a period of six weeks, commencing June 16, 1930, at a rate of $600 a week. It included a six-month option on his further services and an acknowledgment that Herman Shumlin expected him back in New York no later than August 21 “AS SHOW MUST OPEN CHICAGO SEPTEMBER FIRST.”
Up the River had a rocky time making its way to the screen. Warden Lawes was famous for his stewardship of prison baseball, grooming a field, building grandstands, and busing in teams from other facilities. They played tennis at Sing Sing, handball and miniature golf, too. Lawes was shaved every morning by a convict who had slashed a man’s throat, and trustees cared for his three children. Ford had visited Sing Sing and, having observed her interaction with the prisoners, asked the warden if his eight-year-old daughter, Joan Marie, known to just about everyone as Cherie, would like to come to Hollywood.
Ford liked the idea of working against the hellhole cliché of other prison pictures—Paramount’s Thunderbolt comes immediately to mind—but Watkins’ story lacked the vigor and cynicism of Chicago, written as it was by someone who had no direct knowledge of prison life and scarcely six months’ experience as a newspaperwoman. (Frances Marion, the veteran screenwriter who took scenario credit on The Big House, was reputed to have been fronting for Robert Tasker, who spent nearly six years in San Quentin.) Tentative casting had Tracy teamed with Warren Hymer, a comic heavy, leaving the love story to the film’s juvenile lead, Humphrey Bogart, and Broadway actress Claire Luce. Fox had an oversupply of contract players, and there was a push to use as many as possible: Robert Burns and John Swor, Goodie Montgomery, Elizabeth and Helen Keating. With the exception of Hymer, none had ever before appeared in a feature.4 Others proposed for the cast were Ilka Chase, Lee Tracy, Mitchell Harris, Stepin Fetchit, and Willie Collier, the American stage institution who would also be serving as Ford’s dialogue director.
“Sheehan wanted to do a great picture about a prison break,” Ford told Peter Bogdanovich, “so he had some woman write the story and it was just a bunch of junk. Then he went away for a while, and day by day Bill Collier, who was a great character comedian, and I rewrote the script. There was so much opportunity for humor in it that eventually it turned out to be a comedy—all about what went on inside a prison; we had them playing baseball against Sing Sing, and these two fellows broke back in so they’d be in time for the big game.”
Tracy was set to leave The Last Mile on May 26 when actor Lawrence Leslie, his replacement, fell ill with grippe. He remained with the play another week as Herman Shumlin monitored Leslie’s worsening condition, then stayed yet another week as Thomas Mitchell was brought in to replace him.5 He was finally able to step away on Saturday, June 7, and left immediately for the West Coast. Despite the rush to get him to Los Angeles, where he arrived late Monday evening, Tracy found there was absolutely nothing for him to do.
The release of The Big House on June 21 validated Ford’s determination to take the picture in a different direction. M-G-M’s movie was well received, grim as it was, graphic and utterly devoid of comedy. Ford and Collier worked nearly two months on Up the River, joking it up, giving Watkins detailed notes and edits, and stalling production until the end of July. Tracy rented a Ford roadster, and every Tuesday afternoon he drove down to the Fox lot and drew $600. “I’m in Hollywood all alone, nothing to do,” he told his cousin Frank. “I’d call up once in a while. ‘No, we’re still working on the script.’ I was hoping someone would give me something to memorize, something to do. Nothing. Absolutely zilch. John Ford was working on another film, waiting for this one to get together. He was busy.”
The plan at first had been for Spence to go to California alone, since the film wouldn’t take long to shoot and the studio would cover only his own expenses. Then, after a week of sitting around and waiting for something to happen, he called Louise and asked her to come and to bring Johnny out with her. Louise, who had just had her appendix out, hobbled down to the bank and drew out the last of their savings to make the trip. They arrived in time to celebrate Johnny’s sixth birthday, and it was on that day that they went and had his hair cut. As the auburn curls and bangs fell to the floor, Spence and his boy cavorted in front of the mirror and made fun of Weeze’s long face. They found a tiny bungalow on Franklin Avenue where they could live until Spence had finished his scenes. They spent Sundays with the Fords at their beachfront home and had time to drive down to San Diego to visit Louise’s father and sister. They also renewed some old friendships; Grant Mitchell was in town making a picture and Frank McHugh was under contract to Warner Bros.
It was an idyllic summer, marred only by the terrible news that Mother Tracy had broken her back in Chicago. Spence was frantic; she had been riding in a taxi with Carroll when they were broadsided at an intersection. Carroll escaped with minor injuries, but Carrie cracked a vertebra and would be laid up for months. Stuck in California waiting for the picture to start, Spence could do nothing more than call and wire and send money and gifts. Then Louise saw an ominous squib in one of the papers: the number of infantile paralysis cases was on the decline. It was her first inkling that there had been an epidemic. “That’s all John needs,” she muttered to her sister. “If we had known this, we wouldn’t have come.” It would have been silly to go back to New York, so they decided they would just have to be careful, keeping Johnny away from crowds and other children. She combed the papers daily for news, saw the infection rate drop to only one or two cases a day for all of Los Angeles. Gradually, playgrounds and public pools reopened; in time she practically forgot about it.
Eventually, the people at Fox got around to making the picture. “[Ford] called us to the studio at long last to inform us that the drama was now going to be filmed as a comedy,” Claire Luce recalled. “We all groaned inwardly but somehow got through it.” It wasn’t all comedy, though. Ford and Collier had supplied a new frame to the story, turning the prison into a kind of coed country club, but a lot of Watkins’ material remained. The result was an awkward blend of farce and melodrama, a tall order for a newcomer like Tracy, who was called upon to play low comedy one minute, deliver a tense monologue on death row the next. Ford set the tone by opening the film with a nighttime prison break, Tracy and Hymer rendezvousing with a stolen vehicle. “Look at this!” Tracy mutters. “A roadster—and the gang promised me a limousine and a chauffeur!” He tells the dim-witted Hymer to get out and fix a flat, then cheerfully drives off without him. “I don’t see no flat tire!” Hymer shouts. “No?” calls Tracy as he pulls away. “Well, buy a mirror!”
At last there was something to do, and the California summer seemed to energize the whole family. Every morning, after his father had in
ched the Ford out of the little garage on Franklin, Johnny would race the car down to the corner as Louise watched. “Then, after Spencer had stepped on the gas and disappeared down the street, he would come tearing back again, up and down the sidewalk, brimming with sheer animal spirits, until panting, like a little puppy, he would throw himself down on the grass to rest.”
Up the River got under way on August 1, the company working nonstop to close with Tracy as scheduled. Joan Marie Lawes, who had turned nine while waiting for work on the film to begin, appreciated Tracy’s businesslike attitude toward the process of making the picture: “It was interesting at first, but it was a lot of time, a lot of hot lights and makeup. I couldn’t wait to get home.” Spence did his best to put her at her ease, gently joking with her between shots, and as one of the first actors to play a scene with him on film, she found him to be thoroughly in command of the material. “Playing a scene with him was just talking. That’s all. It was so impressive what he could convey with just his expression.”
As per Ford’s dictate, Tracy wore no makeup, and the wax face of the Vitaphone shorts gave way to a wizard’s grid of lines and crevices, the sort of landscape that told more about a character than a dozen lines of dialogue.6 The script called for as many exteriors as interiors, and a traveling shot atop a train was made using the relatively new Dunning process, where background action was filmed independently of dialogue and married with studio footage in the laboratory. “Up the River turned out all right,” Ford acknowledged, “and Spence was perfect. Unlike most stage-trained actors, he instinctively subdued himself before a camera. And he was as natural as if he didn’t know a camera was there.” According to Claire Luce, no one was particularly happy with the bizarre experience. “We made bets as to who could break our contract first.”
James Curtis Page 19