He backed that statement with a formal letter to Benny Thau, advising the studio, in effect, that at the completion of The Seventh Cross he would be leaving for an indefinite period. A few days later, Eddie Mannix took him aside and agreed that after he finished the picture he would be permitted “a certain number of weeks” to go abroad and entertain the troops and that upon his return he would have a four-week vacation before having to start another film. The new contract, which took effect on February 26, 1944, guaranteed him six weeks’ vacation at the completion of each picture and paid $5,277.52 a week or, given the agreed-upon limitation of five productions in any two-year period, approximately $110,000 a picture—good money for a major star, but by no means top dollar.5 It should be noted, however, that Tracy averaged little more than one picture a year during this period, so his actual compensation worked out to roughly $250,000 a film. It was a moot point anyway, as a presidential anti-inflation order signed in 1942 limited the nation’s heavy earners to an annual income of $25,000 after taxes.
As it turned out, Mannix’s generous assurances of time off were conditional, for he and the rest of management were eager to have Tracy play Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, the story of the famed 1942 raid over Japan that had been turned into a best-selling book by Captain Ted Lawson and the Hearst Syndicate’s Bob Considine. Tracy had repeatedly rejected the role, which had him presiding over briefings and little else. “Anybody could go on and do that,” he complained to Louise. “It’s silly. Why should I do it?”
Producer Sam Zimbalist settled on Paramount’s Brian Donlevy to play Doolittle instead, but Donlevy lacked Tracy’s power at the box office and the studio had an investment of nearly $3 million to protect. In November 1943 an item was fed to Louella Parsons assuring her readers that Tracy would indeed be playing the Doolittle role. “Spence is a smart boy,” Parsons commented, “even though the part doesn’t have as much footage as Captain Ted Lawson’s (the role Van Johnson will play).” He was still resisting the assignment in February 1944 when filming began on M-G-M’s massive Stage 15, where a section of flight deck from the U.S.S. Hornet had been fabricated to hold an actual B-25 Mitchell bomber on loan from the army.
The Seventh Cross finished on March 8, with Tracy agreeing to just four weeks off in lieu of the six to which he was now entitled. On April 9 he would start Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo—a three-week job—and do whatever retakes were required for Seventh Cross. Then he would have eight consecutive weeks to tour as he pleased.
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1 It’s worth noting that there was no character named Joe in A Guy Named Joe. The title came from a famous remark by General Claire Chennault of the Flying Tigers: “Boys, when I’m at the stick, I’m just a guy named Joe.”
2 Well, not quite. Hedda Hopper, aware of his cozy relationship with Louella Parsons, reported on Tracy’s aborted trip at the top of her October 27 column: “What happened to the Alaska Trip? What caused him to change his mind? The boys up there are starving for entertainment and they’ve been waiting to welcome him for many months.” It was just the sort of humiliating publicity he feared.
3 Zinnemann had codirected, with Curt Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, and Robert Siodmak, People on Sunday (1930), a well-regarded and widely seen German feature that was also one of Billy Wilder’s earliest writing credits.
4 “I think Spencer was afraid of emotion beyond a certain point,” Mankiewicz said, “and even devotion beyond a certain point. I think he distrusted himself because he was afraid of what might happen if he took a drink.”
5 By way of comparison, Claudette Colbert’s deal with Paramount called for $150,000 a picture.
CHAPTER 20
The Big Drunk
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The debacle of the Alaskan tour weighed heavily on Tracy for months afterward. Scores of movie figures were now in uniform, and many of the ones who weren’t—Bob Hope, Cagney, Bing Crosby, virtually all the women—gave tirelessly to the job of morale on the home front as well as overseas. Metro alone had Melvyn Douglas, Robert Taylor, Jimmy Stewart, Van Heflin, Richard Ney, and Robert Montgomery on active duty, with Mickey Rooney and Red Skelton soon to follow. Tracy’s pal Gable had enlisted with the U.S. Army Air Forces and flown combat missions in Europe. All Tracy had to show for the war effort were his hospital visits, a little radio work, and a few high-profile appearances for war bonds and the like. More than ever, his neuroses were dictating his actions, and only the scotch he permitted himself seemed to bring him relief.
Kate spent the 1943 Christmas season in Los Angeles—her first away from her family—and thought the experience “horrible.” The studios all quit work at noon on the twenty-fourth, then everyone proceeded to get drunk. The weather was hot and it didn’t seem like Christmas at all. Spence gave her some old after-dinner coffee cups, an antique silver bell, a fireplace set—poker and tongs—and ten crisp new fifty-dollar bills. When Time, in its review of A Guy Named Joe, said he was, as usual, “extremely competent,” she and Spence spent an entire evening looking through a dictionary, Tracy maintaining the words always applied to him—capable, competent, etc.—just meant he knew enough “not to fall down.” And, for as much as she could say to the contrary, he insisted there was a world of difference between “extremely competent” and “brilliant.”
Hepburn was on a campaign to film Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra with herself as Lavinia and Greta Garbo as her murderous mother. Spence, in the meantime, had arranged to visit navy bases on the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan as the first step toward greater involvement with the Hollywood Victory Committee. With four days of retakes on The Seventh Cross now behind him, he and Carroll set out for Chicago on May 13, first to visit the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, where he himself had trained in the waning months of the last war, and then on to Manitowoc to see the shipbuilding yards and talk with the officers and crew of the newly launched submarine U.S.S. Icefish (for which he was named mascot). In Milwaukee he saw Buck Herzog of the Sentinel (who described him as “bronzed from his first vacation from film chores in many months”) and said he planned to go on to New York for a round of visits to government hospitals.
In Freeport the boys visited their uncle Andrew and aunt Emma, and relatives drove in from nearby. Ann Willits, the nine-year-old granddaughter of the late Frank J. Tracy, could recall Spence telling her about Susie, who was close in age, and asking if she knew how to play hopscotch. “I did, but I said, ‘No.’ And much to the frustration of Aunt Mame [Andrew’s wife], who had lunch ready, he showed me how to play. I remember asking my mom and dad on the way home how he just happened to have chalk in his pocket.”
Emma Brown, a classic maiden lady who favored black clothing and wore dresses until they were threadbare, was in her seventies but still owned the family feed business on Galena Avenue. “Aunt Mum” would typically meet her nephews at the Hotel Freeport, where Spence, in particular, would hole up and rarely leave. “They were the closest three people you ever saw,” said Bertha Calhoun, “Aunt Mum and Carroll and Spencer.”
Whether Tracy made it to New York or not is unclear, for his drinking was growing steadily worse. M-G-M studio records show he was “ill” a total of sixteen days on The Seventh Cross, and Fay Kanin, Michael Kanin’s wife and later writing partner, got a glimpse of such illness firsthand: “I remember having to meet Spencer for lunch at one of the fancy Beverly Hills restaurants—I don’t remember which one—and he had been drinking. Boy, had he been drinking … we had a perfectly good time, though.”
Herzog recalled that Tracy was imbibing freely in Milwaukee, Carroll hovering protectively, and his drinking likely continued in Chicago after Carroll returned to California. Actress Edith Luckett, who toured with Tracy in The Baby Cyclone, had settled in Chicago after marrying Dr. Loyal Davis, a prominent neurosurgeon, in 1929. Tracy generally saw the Davises when he was in town for any length of time, and according to Luckett’s daughter Nancy, he stayed at the family’s East Lak
e Shore Drive apartment so often that he “practically became a member of the family.”
Katie Treat, widow of Earl Treat, the founder of the Chicago chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous, remembered a call placed to her husband by Edith Davis sometime in the mid-1940s. “Lucky” (as she was known to her friends) told Earl
that she had a friend that she had been on the stage [with]…He was in great trouble at the Blackstone [Hotel], but she was going to move him up to their house … Would Earl come to their house and talk to this man? So Earl galloped down there and Nancy opened the door … and it was Spencer Tracy who was in trouble. And he really was. He would go to the Blackstone and hole in there and just drink himself to death. And they’d go and get him and take him home. So Earl kept track of him and every time Spencer came to town he’d call Earl and they’d have lunch or dinner together and Earl would [talk to him]. Spencer didn’t stop drinking—he kept right on—so finally he said to Earl, “How would you like to go to Hollywood?” Earl said he had never really thought of going to Hollywood. Spencer said, “I’ll move your family out there, I’ll give you a house and a car and all the servants you need if you’ll dance attendance on me and keep me sober.” And Earl said, “I’ll tell you something: If I accepted that, I’d be drunk in a week!”
The concept of alcoholism as a disease didn’t originate with Alcoholics Anonymous, but A.A. certainly popularized the notion. Embracing it helped build the organization by persuading potential members they were truly “powerless over alcohol,” the first step in an ongoing journey to sobriety. But making alcoholism a disease negated the idea of personal responsibility and the sense of guilt it engendered. Tracy could never accept the idea that he wasn’t personally responsible for his drunken lapses, for he could never fully justify the self-loathing he carried deep within himself. Kate, moreover, dismissed out of hand the idea of Spence going to Alcoholics Anonymous. Tracy, she pointed out, was “the biggest star in the world” and were he to join A.A. he wouldn’t be anonymous for very long. “There are certain people who JUST CAN’T go to places like that. Spencer was a really curious, enormously complicated, very oversensitive human being with an enormous problem [that there was] no way out of.”
Loyal Davis’ son Richard knew that Tracy and his father were “very, very close” and that Tracy spent time in Chicago hospitalized under his father’s care. “There was a very private floor at Passavant [Memorial Hospital]—the top floor—and I remember he was there maybe six weeks getting dried out. Loyal and Edith kept that very quiet.” This was likely around the time of Tracy’s Midwestern tour, for there are few gaps in the time line that would accommodate such an extended period of treatment.1 Moreover, Richard Davis, on leave from the army, attended the Democratic National Convention in the company of his parents and Mayor and Mrs. Edward J. Kelly in mid-July 1944, and Tracy, he recalled, was there with them. Franklin Roosevelt was nominated for a fourth term, but the party found itself split over a Supreme Court decision invalidating whites-only primaries in Texas and the South.
“The big issue,” said Davis, “was black voting rights, and Spencer Tracy just went bananas about this. He could not understand why there were all these ridiculous rules about blacks voting in the South, and he didn’t waste any time telling Mayor Kelly. I can’t say that my father [who was an arch conservative] disagreed with Spencer Tracy. I don’t think he said anything. He respected Spencer Tracy’s viewpoint.”
Hepburn had been east herself, due back at the studio June 1 to begin work on the film version of Without Love. Tracy likely returned to Los Angeles the following month but was not seen publicly until August 12, when he recorded an episode of Command Performance for Armed Forces Radio. Back at the studio, he spent five days shooting a two-reeler in support of the Seventh Victory Loan for Canada called Tomorrow, John Jones. Played entirely in pantomime, the film was designed to be shown throughout the British Dominion during the October drive, carrying either a French or English narration track as appropriate. He would later receive a special citation for his work in the film from the Canadian Motion Picture War Services Committee, as would L. B. Mayer and all the others involved in its making.
The Seventh Cross was released on September 1, 1944, and became the best-reviewed picture Tracy had made since Woman of the Year—something of a surprise to its recalcitrant star. “This picture is going to be an artistic success,” he had groused to Rosalind Shaffer of the Baltimore Sun while waiting for a scene to be set up one morning on the grounds of the Riviera Country Club. “It will get one good review from one critic and not make any money.”
In fact, it received high praise from all corners, starting in London where it was described in a studio teletype as “a box office smash that was accorded the best press in many war-weary months.” It hit New York in late September, arriving at the Capitol after ten weeks of David O. Selznick’s home front extravaganza Since You Went Away. Zinnemann’s careful compositions (flawlessly executed by the dreaded Freund) and his placing of prominent European figures such as Helene Weigel and Helene Thimig in minor roles—bit parts really—gave the film an unusual texture for an M-G-M production. Taut and suspenseful, it was crowned by Tracy’s spare and often wordless performance, a startling departure from the likes of Tortilla Flat and A Guy Named Joe. And if it wasn’t quite the crowd-pleaser Joe had been, it did restore a certain luster to the Tracy brand.
On September 14 Tracy began a USO tour of Hawaii, visiting the wounded at thirteen army and navy hospitals in his usual low-key manner, refusing all press interviews and relenting only when Major Maurice Evans of the army’s Entertainment Section dispatched a man to his suite at the Royal Hawaiian. Tracy, the man observed, was traveling with two snugly strapped brown suitcases, at least one of which was filled with liquor. He offered the obviously terrified young private, dripping in ill-fitting khaki, a long pull from what tasted like a bottle of bonded bourbon.
“I recall the liquor dribbling down my chin,” Dan Alexander wrote. “Eventually, he removed the bottle, saying, ‘Don’t talk yet. Have another drink.’ I did and now started feeling more relaxed. When I finished this second, Mr. Tracy asked if I smoked and bid me have a cigarette when I said yes. As I puffed, I became aware that he was scrutinizing me—and then, as if satisfied, he said, ‘Now start your interview.’ Which I did, handily, and then easily shared my notes with the waiting media.”
Tracy made the rounds without fanfare, walking in unannounced and introducing himself individually to the men. He signed hundreds of short-snorters, pictures, and scraps of paper, and accepted scores of messages for delivery back home to relatives and sweethearts. In one ward, he saw Joe Breen’s son Tommy, who had lost a leg in a raid on Saipan. In another, he struck up a conversation with a Midwestern boy who hailed, he discovered, from Ipswich. (“My God, Ipswich!” he erupted. “That’s where my Uncle Frank Tracy lived …”) Routinely, he started the day at 5:00 a.m. and continued until nightfall, taking just an hour out for lunch and a swim. On nine of his twelve days there, he also appeared at GI theaters showing A Guy Named Joe and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.
He arrived back in the States on the twenty-sixth, relieved to know that he didn’t need a formal routine to do his bit for the troops. “You don’t have to get up and do a song and dance,” he said. “They just want to talk to you and know someone is thinking of them.” He told Louella Parsons that he wanted to go back, and he started looking for a play he could do in the camps. “I actually think,” said Adela Rogers St. Johns, “that he believed they would take one look at him and say, ‘Is that Spencer Tracy? What a sell. Tell him to go away and send Betty Grable.’ ”
Katharine Hepburn regarded the film version of Without Love as a chance not only to fix the failings of the Barry play, which were manifest, but also to—at long last—do it with the proper leading man. Its sale to M-G-M had made news in 1942, but the selling price, as it turned out, wasn’t nearly as unique as it seemed. That same season, Warners paid $250,000 for Irving Berlin’
s This Is the Army, Fox an estimated $300,000 for The Eve of St. Mark. Screenwriter Nunnally Johnson was heard to explain: “All the film companies got together and agreed not to pay less than $250,000 for any play.”
At first the property was assigned to Leon Gordon, whom Hepburn may have blamed in part for her troubles on Keeper of the Flame. Gordon, newly elevated to the rank of full producer, brought in playwright Samson Raphaelson, Ernst Lubitsch’s frequent collaborator, to do the script. In all, Gordon and Raphaelson spent six months working on the picture, the tension between them evident in the condescending tone Gordon assumed in his notes. Few problems seemed to get resolved, and the ending was satisfactory to no one.
Gordon put the material aside, and the project stalled until March 1944, when Hepburn was able to get the material reassigned to the studio’s veteran comedy specialist, Larry Weingarten. Just prior to going east at the completion of Dragon Seed, she participated in at least one story conference in which Michael Arlen and Howard Emmett Rogers were given sections of the Raphaelson screenplay to review and revise. Within weeks, Weingarten had decided to start fresh with Donald Ogden Stewart, who was the obvious choice and who had a draft screenplay for Hepburn to see when she returned to California on June 16.
A problem with the original play was its topicality; Without Love was dated within two years of its first performance. Under Stewart, only the core of the loveless marriage was retained, Pat, the political economist, becoming a natural scientist working on an improved oxygen mask. In the revised character of Jamie, Hepburn may have been projecting some of her own feelings toward Tracy in making her the daughter of a famed research scientist whose interest in Pat is aroused by his own experimental work. “I often felt that she was submerging herself to him,” her youngest brother, Dr. Robert Hepburn, said of Tracy. “I think, too, that Spencer was a sort of younger edition of her father in her mind. I think she admired his ruggedness.”
James Curtis Page 66