At first, said Louise, Spence seemed pleased she had decided to name the clinic after John; then, after thinking about it, he didn’t think it was such a good idea after all.
He felt it was a great mistake to have called it that, because the impression became so firmly ingrained with people that this was the Tracys’—they were paying for everything, and then they thought Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was paying for it. The things were just absurd. We needed money. We couldn’t have taken care of the whole thing even had we wanted to. It was too much money, and also we felt it was not ourselves, it was too big a thing, that if it were as worthwhile as we thought, and as necessary, everybody should have a hand in it, because then it was everybody’s and it would be much bigger. This was not a little family thing at all.
Contributions for the first year came to $1,440, while expenses ran close to $5,000. “Mr. Disney was one of the first contributors we had. I remember he gave us a hundred dollars. Before we were organized or incorporated or anything, I signed a little letter. I had my nerve, but then they didn’t have all the restrictions they have now. So I just wrote a little letter and we had it printed and I got a list of names from one of those people who furnish names. It was a silly list of five-thousand people, and a lot of people were on that list who couldn’t give ten cents. We sent it out, and out of the five-thousand, we had maybe sixty contributors. Not too many, but one of them was Mr. Disney, who I was sure would.”
At its inception, John Tracy Clinic was the first institution of its kind that was entirely free, and the only one that was exclusively for the parents of deaf and hearing-impaired children. It was a model destined to cost money; the Wright Oral School had charged one hundred dollars for its correspondence course alone and couldn’t come close to breaking even. When they had stretched their meager resources as far as they could, Louise went to Spence: “He thought about it, and we talked about it a little, and he said, ‘How much do you figure it would cost for a year? Would ten-thousand dollars be enough?’ I said, ‘My heavens, yes, that would be wonderful.’ So he gave us the ten thousand and he said, ‘We’ll try it and see what happens.’ And he really, for the first three years, with very minor exceptions—these nickels and dimes that we got from a few people—he furnished all of the money.”
In March the clinic began offering tests for mothers coping with the emotional and psychological stress of parenting a child with special needs. All manner of kids were being brought to the clinic—not just the hearing impaired—and although testing wasn’t mandatory, Louise found that all the mothers seemed to want it. All had experienced the same basic stages of denial, anger, and grief, and all benefited from the kind of emotional support they could only get from one another. Louise drew on her own experiences in shaping the program, arranging for the help and services she wished that she’d had when her own little boy was not yet six and she was constantly being advised to wait until he was older—precious learning years being lost forever. She was also intimately aware of the damage the birth of a handicapped child could inflict on a marriage and that while it was too late for her and Spence, other marriages could be addressed and saved with the psychological counseling they never had for themselves.
Louise went to Howard Strickling at M-G-M and asked how they could get publicity. He said there was no problem, that he would make some phone calls, and articles appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Hearst papers, and May Mann’s syndicated “Going Hollywood” column. Mann described a woman who typically came to work in a simple blue suit and hat to match, a ring of linked platinum horseshoes—studded with diamonds and rubies, a gift from Spence—on the small finger of her right hand, her simple white gold wedding band on her left, down on her knees scrubbing the floors before the kids came in. “The children must not sit on dirty floors,” she told the clinic’s new executive secretary. “You can run a typewriter. I can’t. But I know how to scrub and clean.”
News of the clinic spread quickly; inquiries poured in. In July the clinic initiated its first summer session, an intensive six-week course for mothers and children set up by Mary New of the Lexington School for the Deaf. Miss New came from New York without salary—only the barest of expenses were paid—and presided over a program designed specifically for parents and children who came from out of state and couldn’t otherwise participate. Sixty-two years later, Carol Lee Wales, who attended the last two weeks of that first summer session, could still vividly recall the old frame building and the playground, and the tutor helping her with her speech during individual sessions upstairs. “She would put my hand on her cheek or throat to feel the sounds, and we blew on feathers or tissue to see the breath sounds.”
Spence was preparing to write another $10,000 check when he told Louise it was time to formalize the arrangement. “If I’m going to give all this money,” he said, “we’ve got to set something up. You have to incorporate or else I can’t take it off on the income tax.” To get it all together, Louise instinctively turned to her polo buddies, the closest and most enduring circle of friends she had. She called Neil McCarthy, the millionaire sportsman and attorney whose racing silks were represented at all the major tracks, and asked him what to do about incorporating. “It’s very simple,” he said. “I’ll do it for you. I’ll be your secretary.” Then he said, “You know, you have to have some people to incorporate.” She called Walt Disney, whom she had first met “riding and playing out on the dirt field. He played with all the women. He was a beginner, you see, and he just loved it for the fun. Both he and Roy Disney played. So I called him and asked if he would go on the board, maybe be the vice-president. ‘Sure,’ he said. So we had him and Mr. McCarthy and then Mrs. Caldwell, Mrs. Orville Caldwell, one of my very best friends.”
John Tracy Clinic’s first summer session, July–August 1943. Carol Lee Wales is the child whose painting Louise is admiring. (CAROL LEE BARNES)
Tracy filled his time away from A Guy Named Joe recording broadcasts for Armed Forces Radio and visiting hospitals up and down the California coast, shaking hands, signing autographs, posing for pictures. Occasionally he showed up at the Hollywood Canteen, where he was known to sing “Pistol Packin’ Mama” to the soldiers, a song he would eventually teach to Gary Cooper. Kate was in and out of town, keeping in touch by phone, permitting Spence to cover her airfare when she went to New York to visit her mother, who was ill, and her train fare when she returned. In May the studio announced that Tracy would star in They Were Expendable for producer Sidney Franklin, an unlikely occurrence with Joe hanging fire for the foreseeable future. On the twenty-fifth of that month, with Van Johnson still decidedly on the mend, Irene Dunne went on with her second picture for Metro, The White Cliffs of Dover, an earnest tearjerker inspired by Alice Duer Miller’s famous poem.
At the Hollywood Canteen. (PATRICIA MAHON COLLECTION)
The meetings of the so-called Boys’ Club had become less frequent, though no less important to its individual members, who shifted from time to time. “When Spence was off the sauce, he was kind of a sour guy,” James Cagney recalled. “He would shun company, so I would have dinner with him alone. I think he was a very sad man. I made no demands on him. It was just small talk mostly.” The experience of public dining soured considerably for the group after Tracy’s 1942 binge, when retakes for Tortilla Flat had been held up several weeks. “It was never announced where we would have dinner,” Frank McHugh remembered. “It was a guarded secret. However, we could never elude ‘Square Deal’ [Billy] Grady. He would invariably show up and sit at another table alone. Keeping an eye on Spence, no doubt, [while he was working].”
Whenever they wanted privacy, the boys would meet at the home of one of the members. “All the wives,” said Dorothy McHugh, “were perfectly willing to arrange it and disappear, but whoever you had for a cook, it got to be this terrible rivalry. You know, who had the best dinner. Somebody would come home and say, ‘You should get that pie at the Cagneys! The best I ever tasted!’ ” When it came Spence’s turn, the
group assembled at Kate’s rented house in Beverly Hills, “and she would be there with Ethel Barrymore and people like that. But, of course, the wives never went! She would maybe not have it be the Boys’ Club night, but would invite them to a dinner party.”
Van Johnson’s recovery was speedier than anyone expected, and work on A Guy Named Joe resumed in early July 1943. He still suffered from frequent headaches and fatigue and was left with facial scars that required heavy makeup and careful lighting to hide, but the effect was remarkably subtle, and the rushes betrayed no hint of the trauma he had been through. Irene Dunne was in a tougher spot, because Johnson’s return put her in the unenviable position of having to shoot two pictures simultaneously, portraying Dorinda the seasoned pilot on some days, the misty-eyed Susan Dunn on others. “I’ve always lived the characters I played,” she said, “and to be these two entirely different women at the same time was unbearable.”
Tracy’s Pete Sandidge1 was one of his richest creations, a cocky hotdogger of a pilot who lent himself to endless colorations, unseen and unheard as he was by the earthly members of the cast. “He brought the art of reacting to a new height,” Barry Nelson observed. “I would get to see the dailies, and what I didn’t learn sitting on the set … because it’s very hard to see the expressions … you could see them in the close-ups and two-shots in the dailies. You saw how much he had added in his thought process of what that character was thinking when someone else was speaking … He was always right on the button; there was never a wasted movement, a wasted thought, never an extraneous one, great economy in his playing.”
In Sandidge, Louise could see Spence as he was at home, the sparkle in his eyes, the puckish Irish humor, the natural intensity of a man always up on his game. “I have seldom lost myself in a picture when he was on,” she once commented. “I was always watching him.” However, in A Guy Named Joe she could immerse herself, revel in it, forget, for a change, that it was a movie. “You can just see him as he was,” she said of it. “It was just so real. He had some of the same funny expressions. There were so many things he did … I liked him very much in A Guy Named Joe.”
Production was closed down once again in mid-August so that background plates could be made by a second unit in Florida. The Hollywood Victory Committee took the hiatus as an opportunity to propose a tour of the Pacific for Tracy that would take him to Hawaii, Canton, Fiji, New Caledonia, Brisbane, and Samoa beginning September 20 and continuing through the end of October. Tentatively agreeing to the plan, he was plainly dubious of making high-profile appearances where performances might be expected of him. “What can I do?” he said to Adela Rogers St. Johns. “I’m no good. I’m just an actor. I have to have a part and a play and everything, and how can you do that? I can’t talk well myself. I’m not the guy they see up there on the screen at all. I’m just a very ordinary man and probably not nearly as sure of things as they are. I can’t sing or dance or tell stories. Send someone who can make ’em laugh, somebody who has something to offer.”
He was back on the set of Joe following Labor Day, his plans for the Pacific tour now conflicting with Fleming’s schedule and the studio’s need to keep him available for retakes once his vacation kicked in. Leo Morrison was in the process of negotiating a new contract when someone noticed it contained no provision for retakes during his vacation periods, which started at six weeks and could extend to twelve weeks if he did two consecutive pictures or twenty-four weeks if he elected to do a play. A Guy Named Joe wrapped on September 20, 1943, with considerable miniature work yet to be shot, meaning it would likely be a month before the film could be previewed and any fixes identified. In lieu of the Pacific tour, Tracy agreed to go north into Alaska to visit some newly established bases, taking with him a small troupe of performers that included Marilyn Maxwell, Nancy Barnes, and comedian Johnny Bond.
Kate was in the first days of filming Dragon Seed when he left, a growing anxiety over the mere act of flying taking hold of him as he arrived in Seattle. It had been many years since he had seen Lois and Kenny Edgers, now a dentist with a thriving practice, and with the weather fogging in plane traffic, he seized the opportunity to meet them for dinner. Walking into Spence’s suite at the Olympic Hotel, Kenny could see that he was on the phone with Louise. “Here’s Kenny now,” Spence said to her, “and you should see him. He has hardly any gray hair!” Tracy, of course, had begun to gray early. He had just been informed that the Alaskan base had no accommodations for the women in his troupe and that the weather was unsatisfactory. As they waited it out, the pressure mounted for a decision on his part.
Taking advantage of their proximity to Victoria, Tracy phoned Lincoln Cromwell, now also in private practice and with a young family. “Spence told me to get right on over there,” Cromwell recalled. “There was no saying no to the man, so I just closed my office and took the afternoon ferry across the Sound. Evidently, he needed me for moral support.” Tracy told Cromwell that his troupe was in a “state of rebellion” and many wanted to turn back. According to him, the actors and showgirls were afraid of flying and of entering a war zone, which Alaska technically was, and that he was having little success in reassuring them. “I was all for Spence, but after a day the truth of the situation became clear to me. He, himself, was the source of the fear and dissension circulating through the group.”
Tracy was plainly terrified of flying any farther, and the final omen had come the day before, when a waitress in the hotel coffee shop told him that she had also served Wiley Post just before he left on his fateful flight to Alaska with Will Rogers. “On a conscious level, Spencer appeared unaware that he was the author of the rapidly spreading ‘rebellion’ in his troupe. However, he finally acceded to the consensus and, after three days, they all returned by plane to Los Angeles.”
Kenny Edgers had a call from Spence at 4:30 one morning, asking him to come down to the Olympic and help him decide what to do.
He said he had been “directed” for so long that he’d lost the ability to make decisions. In these small hours, among other things, he said he envied me the necessity of making “either-or” choices. Either people made his decisions for him, or it was a matter of choosing some tangible item (car, clothing, etc.) and he could have anything he wanted. He had five Cadillacs and the planning of acquiring anything had lost its kick. So he worried about his public image. After he returned to Hollywood, he phoned me several times to inquire if Seattle papers had unfavorable publicity. No mention had been made and his days of agony were unnecessary.2
Tracy told Lincoln Cromwell the younger man obviously “needed a vacation” and insisted on his accompanying them on the flight back. For the next two weeks Cromwell saw him daily, staying with him in his two-bedroom suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where Tracy had left him upon their arrival in L.A.
He went on up the hill to see Katharine Hepburn. Later that evening, he sent a limousine down to bring me up to her house … I knew that he and Mrs. Tracy had been living apart since my first year at McGill. At the party Spencer gave for me between my first and second years of medical school, Louise Tracy was conspicuous by her absence. I recall that I spent most of that evening sitting across the table talking with Katharine Hepburn, while Spencer tromped back and forth in front of the window, looking down at Hollywood below. He was still preoccupied with his aborted Alaska excursion. Miss Hepburn had grown up in a medical family … and she was interested in—and conversant with—a variety of medical topics. We had a long, spirited discussion about biology, medicine, and philosophy with Spencer participating little, if at all.
During the days, Spence went to work at the studio, and I drove around Los Angeles, renewing old friendships. He made his car available for my use, even requesting the Rationing Board to make more gas available for me. I repaid him by running some of his errands. One of these was to return a heavy parka he had borrowed from Jimmy Roosevelt to wear in Alaska. Spencer was a dedicated Democrat, with friends high up in the Roosevelt administration. In th
e evenings, we would go out to a restaurant to eat or have food sent up from the hotel. Spence did no cooking there. While still at medical school, I had been cautioned by Dr. Dennis to avoid alcohol—both the subject and the substance—when with Spencer. During this period, however, we usually had a couple of drinks before dinner, and Spence never over-indulged. At no time I was with him did he conduct himself as anything but a gentleman.
Kate was no more a drinker than Louise, but where Louise’s tactic was sheer avoidance, Hepburn would give him a drink and then challenge him to handle it. Like most Americans of the time, she considered the abuse of alcohol a failure of the will, though not necessarily the moral failing that temperance crusaders and prohibitionists contended. There’s every indication, in fact, that she never especially wanted Tracy to quit drinking altogether. He maddened her, grieved her at times, but never bored her. “You have to say, ‘What do you expect of life?’ I’ve known several men who drank too much and they were all extremely interesting.” To their friend Bill Self she was blunter still: “All of my men have been drunks.”
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