James Curtis

by Spencer Tracy: A Biography

  Gable famously wore dentures; he would occasionally pull them out to shock people, particularly women who seemed just a tad too admiring. The blow damaged his upper plate and split his lip, which required four stitches. Tracy had nine days off, time he passed swimming, playing tennis, and doing a retake in old-age makeup for Edison, the Man. On May 1 he marked two full years on the wagon, and the following day tipped the scales at 192 ½ pounds—his heaviest ever.

  He thought Edison a “good little picture—not great” but didn’t think it stood much of a chance commercially. So when plans were finalized for the world premiere in Orange, New Jersey, he made the unusual decision to go east to support it. The schedule on Boom Town was arranged to create a seven-day window in which he wouldn’t be needed, and on May 12 he and Louise left on the Super Chief in the company of Howard Strickling and his wife.

  The Edison premiere, the centerpiece of a three-day celebration, was spread over six theaters and was practically a replay of the Boys Town event in Omaha. A crowd of twenty thousand movie-mad fans flooded the Oranges, forcing Tracy to creep into the gala ball at the local armory through a back door. The crowd on the outside began to chant “We want Tracy! We want Tracy!” And with the mob pounding on the walls and hanging from the windows, Tracy became aware that he had lost his collar button—either to a fan or to the commotion itself—and was having a tough time holding his neckpiece together. Most of the four thousand dancers on the floor of the ballroom joined in a hunt for the button before photos could be taken with the Edisons, Governor A. Harry Moore, and other distinguished guests. When the crowd outside refused to disperse, it was arranged for Tracy and his leading lady, actress Rita Johnson, to wave to the throng through an upper window, an appearance that triggered fifteen minutes of wild cheering.

  There was scarcely time to see anything in New York, but Spence and Louise caught a performance of There Shall Be No Light—with Lunt and Fontanne—on their last night in town. Back in California, Tracy settled into the final days of production on Boom Town while giving interviews in support of Edison. Significantly, he talked to author-educator John Erskine, who challenged him on notions of art and artifice and “whether the ideas of experience furnished by our pictures are complete and true; whether the ideals are high enough or important enough for adults.” Impressed by the amount of process work being employed on Boom Town, Erskine asked whether it was good to accept “the doctrine that accuracy of information was the same as truth to life.” In other words, was realism achieved in any meaningful sense by photographing actual places for backgrounds?

  “Of course not,” said Tracy. “That sort of thing gives us authentic information about a place, but realism, as I understand it, must be contributed by the actor, not by the camera.” Asked if he thought the drive for such “historical accuracy” was the result of showing audiences too many newsreels and travelogues, he said, “Of course. It’s a good thing too—in its place. We all like to see places as they really are or were. But a play is something else.” He thought a moment. “I’d go even farther. The portrayal of a character is not only separate from the background, or scenery. It may also be, to a certain extent, separate from the most notable accomplishments of the character. In portraying Edison, for example, it wasn’t enough to tell the audience what they already knew: that Edison invented his light bulb. Even when he wasn’t accomplishing anything, in the intervals between achievements, he must have been recognizable as a great man. I kept asking myself, ‘What was he like when he wasn’t inventing?’ ”

  “That’s all very well for great men,” Erskine said, “but what about the lesser folk?”

  “The same for them,” Tracy replied. “In Grapes of Wrath, for example, the characters are terms in a social and economic problem, but they are also human beings, and they would be individuals even if the problem didn’t exist.”

  “But how can a character be portrayed as ‘great’ aside from what he does?”

  “Well, sometimes a man is great because of what he refuses to do, and sometimes the character of a famous man is revealed in small things which his fame overshadows. In the Edison film, for instance, the inventor’s courage and persistence count for more than his success. To build up the real Edison, we tried to suggest those little ways of friendship, those instincts of loyalty and justice, which made the men in his laboratory devoted to him, and I had to indicate his qualities in his manner, in so far as I could, even when I was saying or doing nothing in particular.”

  “Even so,” said Erskine, “how true to history were you? Did you give the real Edison?”

  “My idea of Edison.”

  “Then the portrait isn’t realistic?”

  “Realism,” said Tracy, “is always someone’s idea of reality. It gets the name of ‘real’ when the audience agrees it is true. If I can’t convince the audience, then the portrait won’t seem real, no matter how true it is.”

  The day he finished Boom Town, Tracy left by rail for Chicago and his first visit in eighteen years to the campus of Ripon College. Professor H. P. Boody had sought his return as early as 1927, and regularly thereafter. In 1936 there was talk of awarding Tracy an honorary degree, and in 1939 a movement to bring the premiere of Northwest Passage to Ripon drew the support of Wisconsin governor Julius Heil. On November 6, longtime Ripon president Silas Evans wrote Tracy at M-G-M, advising him the trustees wished to confer upon him “a form of doctor’s degree” appropriate to his achievements and trusting that he would “consider it an honor” to receive such a degree. Responding by wire, Tracy assured Dr. Evans that he would indeed appreciate the honor and could come after completion of the Edison picture “in about eight weeks” or, if he preferred, during commencement. “I shall arrange to be there if I have to fly and can stay only a day.”

  There followed a flurry of proposals and counterproposals, first regarding Northwest Passage, later Edison, the Man, and the possibility that Tracy could stop at Ripon on his way home from New Jersey. Boom Town, now ten days behind schedule, intervened, and so the plan was shifted to commencement on June 10, 1940, with Edison having its Wisconsin premiere at the five-hundred-seat Campus Theatre. As Frank Whitbeck went on ahead to supervise arrangements, Tracy, accompanied by Carroll, boarded a train east for Chicago.

  In Milwaukee they stopped at the University Club, where they caught up with Gene Sullivan, a prominent attorney and Carroll’s brother-in-law. Nibbling Milwaukee rye bread, Tracy met the press, nervously running his hands through his graying hair and talking excitedly of Louise’s racehorse, Holsworthy. (“Twelve starts and win or place every time!”) He revealed to the group that he had given up polo and was amused to know that Gus Christy was still at the Athletic Club. “What’ll you have to drink, boys? Come on, don’t be bashful!” Then, glancing out a window toward Lake Michigan, “Some fog, eh? I didn’t recall Milwaukee was so damn foggy, but I’m glad to be back.”

  Somebody asked whether he might return to Broadway. Reflectively, he said, “I don’t think so … Every time I see my friend [George Jean] Nathan, he tries to lure me back to the stage, saying he’ll find a great play for me. But I guess not. I’ve never lost interest in the stage though. I get to New York to see the plays … The stage is still the best place for training an actor, don’t forget that. Any youngster who wants a Hollywood career should go there by way of New York or some other stage—playing in stock, what there is left of it. Don’t go to Hollywood to begin. What chance is there out there? They’ve got no facilities for training actors.”

  He and Whitbeck made the two-hour drive to Ripon the next morning, and at noon he became the honored guest of the school’s seventy-fourth graduating class. Having donned cap and gown, Tracy was escorted to Ingram Hall, where he posed for pictures with Silas Evans, Professor Boody, J. Clark Graham, and a number of former classmates, including J. Harold Bumby, Tracy’s former teammate and the man who witnessed his audition before Franklin Sargent in 1922. After a commencement address from Dr. Gordon Laing, dean emer
itus of the University of Chicago, everyone moved outside to accommodate a crowd estimated at 2,500 for the actual ceremony. Professor Boody spoke first: “Today marks for me the close of 25 years of teaching at Ripon College, and I consider it a most happy coincidence that on this anniversary I am permitted to present one of my former students for an honorary degree—one whose friendship and loyalty have been more precious to me than rubies, and whose rise to the top of his profession I have watched with ever-increasing pride and admiration.”

  Boody presented Dean Graham, under whose guidance Tracy’s first public performances were given. “Spencer Tracy, the world knows you as many people, for in your time you have played many parts. But Ripon College knows you in another role—that of the eager youth who spoke his lines impromptu to the cues of life. That youth we remember with affection, both for himself and the great promise that he displayed even then … The task of the actor, as Shakespeare remarked, is, and ever has been, to hold the mirror up to nature to interpret the deepest passions of the human soul, and thereby cleanse it through pity and terror in the classic Aristotelian sense. To that distinguished company you indubitably belong.” Silas Evans spoke of Tracy’s sincerity and intelligence, his mastery of his art. “Your acting has not only been highly entertaining,” he said, “it has been thoroughly educational, and on behalf of the board of trustees of the college, it gives me great pleasure to present the degree of Doctor of Dramatic Art, with all the privileges and duties appertaining thereto.”

  Tracy moved to the microphone. “There are some things I intended to say,” he said in a voice choked with emotion. “I wanted to thank Dean Graham and Professor Boody in particular for the great confidence they displayed in me and for their help. And if through my work I have done some small justice to their confidence, I am happy indeed. There are some other things I wanted to say about Ripon, but it seems that when you get to them you don’t say them. Perhaps it’s better this way … I had intended saying something to the graduating class. Please bear with me, because when you come back, you’ll feel this too. I’d like you to accept from me a ‘God bless you all and give you strength to carry on.’ ”

  The ovation that greeted his remarks continued as the procession slowly made its way to the president’s home for a luncheon that included Mayor Carl Zeidler of Milwaukee. He was then whisked back to West Hall, his old campus home, where he was presented with a small golden gavel in commemoration of his time as leader of Alpha Phi Omega. Following a reception at the home of Professor Boody, he was driven out to the Green Lake home of Harold Bumby, now a successful industrialist whose various enterprises included a major interest in Speed Queen. A sitdown dinner for fifty was staged at the Bumby household, where the guests included Lorraine Foat Holmes, who hadn’t seen him in several years. He looked heavier, she observed, and grayer, but was still very much the Spence she always knew.

  Accepting an honorary doctorate at Ripon College, June 10, 1940. Left to right: Silas Evans, college president, Tracy, Professors H. Phillips Boody and J. Clark Graham. (PATRICIA MAHON COLLECTION)

  Tracy said, “This day will live with me as the greatest so far in this part of my life.” Walter Monfried, long the Milwaukee Journal theater and music critic, would also remember it, but for a somewhat different reason. At the end of commencement exercises, Monfried made his way to a telephone and called the Journal. “I have the Tracy story,” he said. “Do you want to take it now?”

  “Hell, no!” his city editor replied. “Italy has just gone to war against France and England—Tracy can wait ’til tomorrow!”

  With its top-heavy assortment of players, Boom Town opened in New York over the Labor Day weekend and handily played to more people than any single attraction since Gone With the Wind. Tracy made a quick visit east, ostensibly to support the picture but in reality to meet with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who received him in the Oval Office on September 16, 1940.

  The president, who was in a close race for a third term against Wendell Willkie, thanked Tracy for his help in shoring up support within the film industry. Pat O’Brien had just been elected chairman of the “Hollywood for Roosevelt” committee, and although Tracy generally disapproved of actors giving off their political preferences, he agreed to lend his name to the cause, as had Myrna Loy, Thomas Mitchell, Alice Faye, Betty Grable, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Humphrey Bogart, and Jimmy Cagney. Robert Montgomery was O’Brien’s counterpart on the Republican side, and his constituents included Walt Disney, Fred Astaire, Lionel Barrymore, Gary Cooper, Jack Warner, Bing Crosby, Irene Dunne, and Louis B. Mayer.

  While in Washington, Tracy fielded the usual questions at an afternoon “press party” arranged by the studio. Asked again if he ever thought of going back to the stage, he replied, “Another picture like I Take This Woman and I might have to in order to eat.” He said that any play that came along for him would likely have to wait a couple of years. His next picture, he told the group, would probably be Tortilla Flat, followed by The Yearling. What he didn’t say—doubtless because he didn’t want to answer the questions that would inevitably follow—was that he would be starting the Boys Town sequel in the space of a few weeks.

  The studio was pressuring him to do Dr. Ephraim McDowell, the story of the pioneering American surgeon, and had already put novelist and biographer Gene Fowler to work on a script. Tracy didn’t like the story and didn’t much care to do another period picture, nor, for that matter, another biography. He had a tense meeting with Eddie Mannix on October 17, followed by a session on the twenty-first with Mannix, Benny Thau, and Neil McCarthy. It was the opening salvo in negotiations over a new contract, and Tracy went through the motions of doing costume and makeup tests while a sometimes heated discussion ensued.

  At first, Father Flanagan was dubious about a second picture. Given the drop in contributions after the first picture appeared, he worried a second could sink the entire enterprise. Broadway’s Gene Buck, a close friend and the president of ASCAP, advised him privately on the matter of a sequel: “I think you got a rotten deal, which I deplore and which I believe eventually will straighten itself out … Please do not, for any consideration at the moment, without first thinking it through, lend your name or your institution to any second edition.” Eventually the studio pledged to build a dormitory with some of the earnings from the film, and a check for $35,000 was cut in June 1939.

  The formal contract for a second Boys Town film was signed in February 1940 and called for a cash payment of $100,000. John Considine promised “completely a new story” that would follow the lives of some of the boys as they “step out of Father Flanagan’s Boys Town into the world, and will portray the continued interest of Father Flanagan in the life of his wards even after they leave Boys Town.” Considine, who was accompanied to Omaha by screenwriter Jim McGuinness, promised the new picture would be made on “quite an elaborate scale” and that “a great deal of the filming” would take place in Nebraska. In the middle of a building campaign, Father Flanagan heralded the signing of the new deal: “The large debt of our Home will be reduced by the amount to be paid us, and we will be given another opportunity to present to the world the humanitarian and character-building work that is being done in Boys Town.”

  Tracy said nothing when presented the script, provisionally titled Boys Town Sequel, and Louise, who thought the original “stuffy,” saw no point in trying to talk him out of it. The film went into production in Culver City on November 4, 1940, and Considine’s assurances to the contrary, there would be no location work for either of its two stars. As it progressed, it was as if the movie was made under a complete publicity blackout. There were no on-set visits, no interviews given, no advance ballyhoo approaching the scale of the first production. Louise was gone much of the time, Johnny having returned, at age sixteen, to the Wright Oral School in New York City, and Tracy seemed more focused on preparations for his next picture than on the work at hand.

  Tracy’s first conference on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde took place on
November 8, 1940, when he met with Eddie Mannix, producer Victor Saville, and Vic Fleming, who was set to direct the picture. Saville’s original idea had been to star Robert Donat, who was to have made the film at the former Alexander Korda studios at Denham. Donat was said to be “enthusiastic” and, moving forward, M-G-M acquired the rights to Robert Louis Stevenson’s original story from Paramount, where previous versions had been made in 1920 and 1931. The war intervened, and Saville settled in California while Donat chose to remain in England.

  In New York, Howard Dietz was incredulous; Metro didn’t make horror pictures, and certainly not with their top stars. Jekyll and Hyde was different, in that it had always been an important stage vehicle—notably for Richard Mansfield—and the two Paramount versions had featured John Barrymore and Fredric March, respectively. When Donat’s participation became impractical in the spring of 1940, Saville naturally thought of Tracy as the studio’s only credible candidate for the title role. Tracy resisted the part at first, unsure of how he’d handle it, and relented only after Fleming got involved and proposed to do something new and daring with the idea.