James Curtis

by Spencer Tracy: A Biography

  The girl in the picture was Marian Nixon, a veteran of more than fifty films who had gained new popularity by taking the role refused by Janet Gaynor in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Nixon gave Tracy some badly needed support in terms of name value, as did Stu Erwin, who played his dim-witted sidekick. The principal difference, beyond Connolly’s story and the script fashioned from it, lay in its director, Harry Lachman. Born in Illinois, Lachman was, like Rowland Brown, trained as an illustrator, but where Brown fell into the life of a roustabout, Lachman went to Paris to study and became one of Europe’s better known Postimpressionist painters. He entered films in 1925, initially working in an advisory capacity with Rex Ingram, later directing pictures of his own in both England and France. One of Sheehan’s trophies, Lachman was given a generous schedule on Face in the Sky and was able to give Tracy a sense of how a real artist would carry himself.

  Meanwhile, Pier 13, retitled Me and My Gal, played a week’s stand at the Roxy in New York and cemented Tracy’s reputation as a poor draw. Sold as a “high-speed comedy-melodrama,” it got caught in the usual pre-Christmas slump and set an all-time low for the massive theater, a weekend blizzard eliminating virtually all the automobile trade. Whatever business there was in the city seemed reserved for Paramount’s A Farewell to Arms at the Criterion and Metro’s Flesh at the Capitol.

  In the middle of December, just as Face in the Sky was finishing up, Louise went east to bring Johnny home for the holidays. While the sight of fresh snow was exhilarating, the mood at the Clarke School was anything but. Johnny was listless, his face pallid. When she embraced him, he was sullen and unresponsive. Upon investigation, she found his rest period had been combined with his physical therapy, negating the value of each. His digestion was poor, potatoes being part of nearly every meal, and he was beginning to show the symptoms of a chest cold. When the housemother asked what of John’s she wanted packed, Louise said, “Everything.”

  On the train going back, John’s cough got worse, and he ran a temperature of 104. By the time they got to Los Angeles, his fever had broken but now Louise had it. She was over it in time for Susie’s first Christmas, but Spence had a surprise of his own. On New Year’s Day, he and Louise were en route to Havana via the Panama Canal aboard the liner S.S. Santa Rosa. They would be gone the better part of a month.

  In November 1932, while Tracy was on location shooting Face in the Sky, Preston Sturges met writer-producer Hector Turnbull at a party. Sturges, author of the hit play Strictly Dishonorable, had fallen into the lucrative business of screenwriting. Universal snapped up his play and, eventually, Sturges as well. Then, unsure of quite what to do with him, they assigned him to a series of workaday projects, the last of which was the script for the H. G. Wells thriller The Invisible Man. More attuned to originals than adaptations, Sturges wrote an entirely new story to go with the title and was fired for his trouble. Now, with three flop plays to his credit and his name on exactly the same number of flop movies, Sturges was hustling an original story for the screen that he proposed to write on spec and sell on percentage as he would a play. The title he gave his story was The Power and the Glory.

  Turnbull, story editor and associate producer to his brother-in-law, Jesse L. Lasky, was intrigued by Sturges’ idea, which was inspired by the life of C. W. Post, the cereal king of Battle Creek. Sturges had briefly been married to Post’s granddaughter, Eleanor Hutton, and he heard the story of the Postum Cereal Company (later General Foods) in snippets. Post was a restless man who built a sales career in “agricultural implements” into one of the great fortunes of the Gilded Age—a rancher, inventor, and art collector who shot and killed himself at the age of fifty-nine. The life of a self-made man naturally interested Sturges, who was himself an inventor and a businessman, but the screen was full of such stories. It was the death of such a man by his own hand that intrigued Sturges, and his nonlinear telling of the life of Tom Garner, his fictional rail tycoon—which mirrored the way Sturges himself had heard the Post story—would begin with Garner’s funeral and move back and forth in time as it depicted his rise from track walker to president. It was a compelling notion with an audacious structure, and Turnbull offered to arrange a conference with Lasky, who had recently joined Fox as an independent producer.

  Tracy first heard of The Power and the Glory when news of Sturges’ percentage deal made the rounds, but it wasn’t until he was called back from Cuba that there was serious talk of his doing the picture. Originally, he had been set to appear opposite Clara Bow in Marie Galante, but when Bow resisted the assignment—as she did practically all assignments—both Tracy and director William K. Howard were suggested to Lasky. Face in the Sky had just been released, and though audiences stayed away in droves, Lasky saw much to like in Tracy’s genial performance. It was, in fact, hard to picture another actor on the Fox lot handling a character who aged from twenty to sixty over the course of a film. (“You know, Spencer, I don’t think you’ll need so very much makeup to play a man of fifty-five,” Bill Howard said as he gave Tracy’s face a hard look.)

  Having declined to produce a treatment, Sturges finished the entire script by mid-January. It took form as a recollection, a give-and-take, between the central character’s oldest friend, Henry, and Henry’s wife, who clearly hates the man. Henry, it seems, knows the real story behind the death of Tom Garner’s first wife, as well as the reason Garner’s second marriage ended in tragedy. He and Tom meet as children, then Garner is seen years later bullying his board of directors into purchasing another line—a deal he has, in fact, already consummated. Here Tom is established as a tough and resourceful businessman, clearly where he is through hard work and raw, undeniable talent. From there Sturges pulled the story back in time to the meeting between Tom and his first wife, Sally. He then jumped forward to contrast that scene with Tom’s encounter with Eve, the daughter of the president of his new rail subsidiary. Having prodded Tom to success, Sally now regrets it. Tom, a cold shadow of his former self, tells her that he loves the younger Eve. In a daze, Sally leaves his office and steps in front of a streetcar.

  Throughout, the vignettes are joined by Henry’s sympathetic narration. Tom is an antiunionist whose confrontation with his striking employees is one of the highlights of the picture. But his life goes sour as he becomes old and sedentary. As C. W. Post’s health failed, so does Tom Garner’s second marriage. His young wife shows her contempt for the old man she has married by falling into bed with his grown son. The Power and the Glory was the American success story gone sour; wealth and happiness as the prelude to disaster. It was a tragedy of theatrical quality, thoroughly cinematic in its rhythms and ambitions, and behind it was the echo of great literature. “The manuscript crackled with its originality of conception and craftsmanship,” Lasky said. “I was astounded. It was the most perfect script I’d ever seen.”

  The president of Fox—the company’s third in as many years—was Sidney R. Kent, a slick salesman from the ranks of distribution who had been vice president and general manager of Paramount-Publix before having his contract settled. Tall and personable, Kent knew everything there was to know about block booking and the hustling of product; considerably less, it seemed, about the actual making of movies. Having inherited a deficit from Edward R. Tinker, Kent reported a loss of more than $9 million for the thirty-nine weeks ended September 24, 1932. With Sheehan in Europe, he declared the cost of pictures would have to be brought into line with admission prices, which had eroded nearly 50 percent in the space of a year. Only Sheehan’s glistening production of Cavalcade provided some breathing room for the company when it opened in New York on January 5, 1933, and became the surprise hit of the season.

  Normally based in New York, Kent appeared unannounced one day at Movietone City and began making changes. He gave Sol Wurtzel a slate of six pictures to produce and promptly replaced him as superintendent with J. J. Gain, the studio’s newly appointed business manager. Salary cuts, Kent indicated, would go into effect within two weeks, a
nd most people under contract would be asked to share the pain. “We will have to predicate all our plans on current conditions and gear ourselves to operate, if not profitably, at least without a loss for the next two years … Pictures will be produced here ranging from $225,000 to $240,000 in budget. Now and then we will turn out a Cavalcade. That type of picture is necessary for prestige, but the average picture will be cut considerably in cost.”

  It took some talking on Lasky’s part to convince Kent that The Power and the Glory had potential as a “prestige” title, especially in light of Sturges’ extraordinary contract demands. Having first fixed the arbitrary and heart-stopping price of $62,475 on the property, he then insisted on a percentage of the gross at a time when participation deals of any kind were highly unusual. After struggling through a down year, Kent was out to improve the overall quality of Fox product. “Decided I was to do ‘Power and the Glory’ for Jesse Lasky,” Tracy wrote in his Daily Reminder on February 1, 1933. “Script by Preston Sturges, author of ‘Strictly Dishonorable’—great script + great part. Sounds like a winner … I hope so.”

  The day after his meeting with Lasky and Turnbull, Tracy drove to Santa Barbara for a polo tournament with Big Boy Williams. He hadn’t slept well in months and hoped the combination of riding and relaxation would make a difference. He had White Sox shipped up on the train and was able to take him around the track the next morning. For ten days he followed the same general routine: a ride in the morning, lunch at the hotel, a game in the afternoon. Then dinner with friends and often a movie at one of the theaters along State Street.

  Back at the studio, there were meetings with Lasky, Sturges, and Bill Howard. They discussed story, clothes, and the actress who was to play Garner’s wife. Both Irene Dunne and Mary Astor were considered before Lasky, an avowed partisan of industry veterans, settled on Colleen Moore. One of the most popular stars of silent pictures, Moore hadn’t played in a film since 1929. Yet she was, at thirty-two, the ideal age to play both younger and older, and she would bring some added name power to the picture. “They sent me the script,” she remembered. “Mr. Lasky talked to me and Bill Howard talked to me. Well, the minute I read the script, I couldn’t wait to do it.” Delays were inevitable. By February 20, nearly two hundred people had been dropped from the Fox payroll and salary cuts were estimated as saving another $10,000 a week.

  The film was set to start on Monday, February 27, but then on Saturday they were told it had been postponed three weeks. In the meantime, Lasky and Sturges were drawn into meetings with Dr. James Wingate of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) over the sexual relationship in the script between Tom Garner, Jr., and his stepmother, Eve. The Power and the Glory was unacceptable under the Production Code, even though, as Sturges pointed out, the relationship technically was not incestuous. In a subsequent letter to the filmmakers, Wingate suggested that such an “unfortunate affair” could only be redeemed “if the son kills himself also.” Word of the situation reached Sidney Kent through Will Hays, president of the MPPDA, and Kent shot a letter off to Sheehan in California: “If there is in this story a sex relationship such as Mr. Hays mentions, it will have to come out. I think the quicker we get away from degenerates and fairies in our stories, the better off we are going to be and I do not want any of them in Fox pictures.”

  When Sturges was finally told he could come in and sign his contract, a legal holiday was declared in California. Three days later, on March 4, 1933, Franklin Roosevelt entered the White House, and the following day he issued a presidential proclamation declaring a mandatory four-day bank holiday. No checks could be signed or cashed, and no pictures could be funded. The same day, as a financial pall settled over the entire country, the major studios, with no actors’ union—no equivalent of Equity—to oppose them, began instituting a mandatory 50 percent reduction in salary for all contract players. George Bagnall, the Fox studio treasurer, induced Tracy—who could ill afford it—to accept the cut for an eight-week period beginning March 6.3

  When it looked as if the negotiations with Sturges had irreparably stalled, Sol Wurtzel stepped in and asked that Tracy be assigned to The American, a picture based on the life of Anton Cermak, the first foreign-born mayor of Chicago. Admitting it was a plum part, Tracy nevertheless asked to be let out of the assignment, convinced its similarity to The Power and the Glory would freeze him out of the latter picture should it subsequently get made. Fortunately, Sturges’ contract was finally signed on March 15, and production began eight days later. “The schedule calls for thirty-three days,” Sturges wrote his father on March 27, “but it will probably take a little longer than that. It should be finished by the first of May. We have an excellent cast, an excellent director, an excellent cameraman, and an excellent film editor (cutter). If your son is any good at all as an author, we should have an excellent picture.”

  It was about this time that Louise began talking to Spence about starting a school for the deaf in Los Angeles. A checkup in January had shown that John’s leg had gone back considerably during his time at Clarke and that the food there had tied his stomach in knots. He was put on daily treatments and a strict diet, but Louise thought there must be a better answer. “I felt we might start in a very modest sort of way, say with three or four children. These should not be hard to find, especially as we were willing to finance the venture, and, for the time being, a tuition fee could be waived. I mentally began to turn our den and patio into school room and play yard. All we needed was one good teacher and some children.”

  Louise mentioned the idea to John’s teacher, Mrs. Payzant, who was plainly appalled by it. The public school system, however overtaxed, needed every student it could get. A loss of even a few would trigger a drop in funding that could result in a teacher losing her job. Louise went to the department of handicapped children at the Board of Education, but they couldn’t release any names, nor could they offer any suggestions. Next she tried doctors, talking to Dr. Dietrich, who was their pediatrician, and Dr. Dennis, their family practitioner, both of whom thought her plan quite reasonable, even if they knew of no children who were deaf. She wrote a letter about what she wanted to do, which she thought she could mail to all physicians in the county of Los Angeles, but the head of the medical association didn’t think it would do any good. She talked to other physicians and otologists, all of whom assured her they personally knew of no deaf children.

  Finally, she called the mother of a deaf girl she knew had been going to Wright Oral. This woman belonged to a prominent Los Angeles family of considerable means, and Louise asked if she would be at all interested in such a venture. “She said she had tried the same thing herself once and had had to give it up. She had been able to get neither cooperation nor interest from anyone.” Louise learned later that, according to a survey, there were more than two hundred deaf children of school age in the state of California who were not in school because there were inadequate facilities. While Louise was sputtering over the complete lack of understanding and interest, even in the salons of the state capital, an educator asked her, “Why are you interested in the deaf?” She could see his point. “Most people are not interested in the deaf,” he went on, “until the problem becomes their own.”

  The Power and the Glory called for a lot of exteriors, significantly Garner’s standoff with striking yard men, the Wobblies vilifying him at the scene of a nighttime rally. Garner wades into them, leaving his bodyguards at the car, completely unfazed by the dangerous mood of the mob. They were shooting out near the rail yards, and Howard drew his extras from the hundreds of men who lived like prairie dogs on a vast stretch of flat land that bordered the eastern edge of downtown Los Angeles. Seeing those men working long hours for a day wage of three dollars and a box lunch mollified whatever hard feelings Tracy was nursing over his temporary cut in pay.

  The picture was shot largely on Eastman’s new super-panchromatic film stock, enabling cinematographer James Wong Howe to capture interiors with a
pproximately one-third the light normally needed for such scenes. “Super Pan” brought out new subtleties of shadow and texture, permitting makeup artist Ern Westmore to achieve the old-age effects called for in the script with a minimum of fuss. In Tracy’s case, the lines naturally present in his face were emphasized with a dusting of powder over a foundation base, while Colleen Moore was aged with a careful orchestration of shadows and highlights. Moore also wore a gray wig, while Tracy had his own hair somewhat less convincingly altered with liquid whitener applied with a toothbrush. Much of the effect was achieved with wardrobe, posture, and, as Charles Dudley, the head of the Fox makeup department, put it, “sincerity—characterization and genuine acting ability.”

  To Tracy’s mind, Bill Howard was just about the best director he had ever worked with, a dark, meticulous Irishman who gave the film tone and nuance without getting in the way of either the script or the performances. “He had none of the flamboyancies of many directors,” Colleen Moore remembered. “He never raised his voice. He and I had great rapport. I could tell what he was thinking and do it before we talked about it.” Howard, who began directing pictures in 1921, was the ideal man to stage the pantomime scenes in which the actions and words of the characters were simultaneously expressed in voice-over by Garner’s friend, Henry.

  While the nonlinear structure of the story made the development of his character all the more difficult, Tracy displayed a range he had never before shown on screen, going as he did from the childlike spirit of the early Tom to the burnt-out shell of the rail executive at the end of his days. It was screen acting at its most profound, forceful yet natural, at times quiet to the point of inaudibility. It was as if he was trying to push the conventions of the screen to new levels of subtlety. And yet, whenever anyone asked, he invariably cited the Lunt-Fontanne film version of The Guardsman as the ideal convergence of stage and talking picture technique. “Look how the dialogue overlapped in that,” he would say. “They never waited for each other to finish talking. It was the most natural thing in the world. When you and I talk or when any two people are chatting they don’t wait every time for the other to finish before starting, the way they do in most pictures. People anticipate the last few words each other will say and butt in on them. That’s one of the things that makes Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne natural. And it’s their naturalness that makes them great.”