James Curtis

by Spencer Tracy: A Biography

  Their next picture together, The Sea of Grass, had been in the pipeline since 1937, the year Conrad Richter’s lyrical tale of the changing Southwest was published by Knopf. The studio had it covered in galleys, the reader describing it as “the BEST story in its genre that I know of; it is beautiful, moving, dramatic, quick and subtle in turn, and has some of the most astounding characterizations to be found in any of the modern novels; acting it will be a privilege, directing and producing it a labor of love.”

  Bud Lighton took an early interest, and the picture was earmarked for Tracy and Myrna Loy in the days immediately following the completion of Test Pilot. “Its Western setting and pioneer flavor, similar to my own background, promised the kind of role I’d always wanted to play,” Loy wrote. “They kept postponing it, however, and when they finally announced a starting date without informing me, I called Benny Thau and raised hell: ‘What happened? Who’s playing it?’ When he said, ‘Spence is doing it with Hepburn,’ I realized what had happened. ‘Oh, well,’ I said, ‘that figures.’ I was mad as hell at Spence, at everyone.”

  Pan Berman inherited the project, Lighton having moved to Fox, and an early script by Vincent Lawrence and Earl Paramore was turned over to Marguerite Roberts, who had done some uncredited work on Undercurrent. As usual, Kate involved herself in the writing process, and while Roberts found Tracy “marvelous to work with,” she disliked Hepburn’s intrusions: “I had worked with Hepburn on another picture, Dragon Seed. She frankly wasn’t one of my favorite people. I admire her, and think she’s a very interesting person, but she’s a snob.” Roberts chafed at the film’s message, that the “nesters” settling the land would only ruin it when the rains failed to come and their crops dried up. “The Tracy character affected respect for the natural state of things, the undisturbed grass. He opposed the sodbusters, who wanted land. I had the Hepburn character note that his love for the natural state coincided with his becoming a millionaire off that very state. In other words, was his attachment mystical or opportunistic? [Director Elia] Kazan would have none of my viewpoint, only Tracy’s.”

  Kazan learned of Richter’s book while directing his first feature, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, under Lighton’s supervision at Fox. In New York, where he made his name staging The Skin of Our Teeth, Kazan had directed Dunnigan’s Daughter for the Theatre Guild and made an immediate impression on Lawrence Langner, who in turn commended him to Tracy and Hepburn. Assured a $2.5 million budget and an all-star cast, Kazan had visions of creating an epic American western after the fashion of John Ford. “It is,” he told the New York Times, “a fascinating and unusual love story with a psychological tinge.” The Times went on to report that the studio considered The Sea of Grass its most imposing “physical” production of the year, allocating nearly five months to production, while shooting some forty thousand feet of background footage and second-unit work on the plains of western Nebraska.

  Tracy was carried a full sixteen weeks before starting the picture on May 27, 1946. He filled the time getting his affairs in order, having earned substantially less in 1945 than in any year since the mid-thirties. Carroll had proven useless as a business manager, and when Peggy Gough went to Belgium with the American Red Cross, Tracy turned his affairs over to her replacement, a tall, raven-haired paralegal named Dorothy Griffith. “Miss G.,” as she soon came to be known around the studio, had come to him through Frank Whitbeck, the salty West Coast promotions guru who had informally advised him for years. “Spencer was very bad at negotiating contracts or pictures to go in or stay out of,” said Robert M. W. Vogel, who managed the studio’s international operations, “and Whitbeck befriended him and was more or less his representative.”

  Although he considered investments from time to time, Tracy hadn’t actually put money into anything other than annuities. He could never fully comprehend or justify the vast sums he was paid, and while he was openhanded about luxuries, he seemed most comfortable at the prospect of giving it all away. “I think I’m a pretty good businessman,” he once said, “but I haven’t got any consuming ambition to possess a lot of money. I’m one of those who believes that you can only sleep in one bed at a time, ride one horse, eat one meal, wear one suit of clothes.”

  His attitude toward wealth made him an easy touch, and a complete stranger with a compelling story could easily walk away with fifty or a hundred dollars, often over Carroll’s strenuous objections. Once, Carroll remembered a petitioner who claimed he had worked for their late father in Milwaukee. He made some phone calls, asked some questions, became convinced the man was a phony, and told his brother as much. “Well, maybe there’s just a chance he did,” Spence said. “And if there’s any chance, I want to give him something for Dad’s sake.”

  This was a man, Miss G. decided, who needed protecting. Early in her tenure, she and her new boss worked out a way of deflecting the endless appeals that came his way, the clinic having come to take up much of what might otherwise have gone elsewhere. “I think it’s possible,” she said, “that every charitable organization, at some time or another, approached him for support.”

  Invariably an episode would begin with a call from Larry Keethe, Tracy’s ubiquitous wardrobe man, who would say, “The boss wants to see you.” On the set, Tracy would introduce her to a fund-raiser who had made it onto the lot, sometimes at his own invitation, sometimes at the invitation of a colleague or friend, and who had settled into one of the red leather lounges that lined his portable dressing room.

  Mr. Tracy would say, “Miss G., how much money do we have in the till?” This meant honestly and for sure, “What’s left in our charitable fund?” Often I would start with a tentative, “You could possibly manage a few thousand …” He would ask, “Have we got five Gs?” or “Have we got ten Gs?” and, learning that we did, he would say, “Let’s write it.” I would return to my office with the full particulars and write the check and return it for his signature.

  On the other hand, if he wasn’t about to contribute, he would say, “Miss Giannini, how much money do we have in the till?” This meant, “I don’t think I want to go along with this one,” and indicated that we play the scene. “Your charitable budget for the year is committed,” I’d reply, and this was usually accompanied by a tightening of the face of our audience of one. Then I would brightly offer my suggestion: “However, we could postpone the new altar you promised the Sisters of—” And this line would be interrupted by quiet outrage on the part of Mr. Tracy. “Miss Giannini,” he’d say, “are you suggesting that I renege on my promise to those wonderful nuns? Those dedicated women who spend their lives praying for good in this world?” And the fundraiser would suddenly look upon me with equal disapproval, as if I had suddenly assumed the head of Medusa. “Very well,” I’d say. “That’s the only suggestion I have, and Mr. Evans has been very firm about your commitments for the rest of the year.” (Ross Evans was our tax man.) Then Mr. Tracy would reach for a cigarette, my cue to leave and tell the assistant director to call him for a shot. I’d depart, and a few moments later the assistant would say, “We’re ready when you are, Mr. Tracy.” His Nibs would warmly shake the hand of his guest, regretting ruefully that he couldn’t help out “this time” and the fundraiser would leave knowing that Spencer Tracy was a fine man indeed and wondering how it was that he was stuck with such a horrible woman on his staff as Miss Giannini.

  Where Miss Griffith occasionally did get into trouble was when she was pleading someone’s case for a couple of lines in a Tracy picture.

  He was rather like a school for young actors on the Metro lot. Inasmuch as I kept them at bay, I also knew something about them, their small credits and abilities. I didn’t always try to help, but I did have my favorites, those I thought showed potential. An approach to Spencer Tracy was not easy. He always walked to the set, but never alone. Larry Keethe accompanied him or, sometimes, I walked with him and discussed business affairs. One did not accost a star of his magnitude, so the only way to try it was through me. If
I thought someone capable, I would very often ask Mr. Tracy to give him a thought. One word from him to the director was all that was necessary. This aggravated him … superficially.

  I frequently had to listen to a lengthy and well-played scene attesting to my incompetence. “Miss Griffith, what do I pay you for? You are paid to handle these demands without annoying me. I have all these problems … all these demands upon me … And you … What do you do? You come to me with every indigent actor on the lot …” Knowing very well I wouldn’t bother him with anyone who wasn’t a genuinely viable possibility.

  I would take my leave with a “Very well, but he has—” whatever I thought he had, and more often than not, before the day ended, I would receive a call from Larry Keethe to come to the set. Mr. Tracy would have a few matters he wished attended to, and quite often it would end with, “Tell your newest protégé to see the assistant.” Which meant he had been unable to resist reaching out a hand to an aspiring actor or actress who deserved a chance.

  As the start date for The Sea of Grass approached, Tracy’s indifference to the project became more pronounced. He had returned to M-G-M a heavier and older version of his former self, and where Louella Parsons could insist in her column that he had become “very handsome since his hair started turning gray,” all he could see in the mirror was a character man who, at forty-five years of age, looked a good ten years older. Having briefly met Tracy the previous year, Elia Kazan was anxious about “the lard around his middle.” Seeing the picture as a dust-blown backcountry story, he imagined its characters as lean and leathery, as wedded to the land as the cattle they grazed. His heart sank when he joined Tracy on Lot 4 to inspect two overfed geldings and choose one for him to ride in the picture: “He had not lost weight, he did not look like a Remington, he was not tight-waisted like the wranglers or even like Bud Lighton. Spencer looked … like the horses.”

  Kazan knew he’d been sandbagged when he was asked to approve sketches for costumes that had already been fitted. Berman liked them, he was told, and there was a considerable move on to get the film into production. Hepburn alone had some twenty changes. “Looks to me,” said Kazan, “that every time she goes in to take a piss, she’ll come bouncing out of the can in a snazzy new outfit.” Designer Walter Plunkett, who had been dressing her since Christopher Strong, patiently explained: “She loves Spence, he’s the love of her life, and she wants him to think that on any given day she’s prettier than any other girl in the world.”

  “I thought you meant in the movie,” Kazan said.

  “The movie!” Plunkett erupted. “I’m talking about real life. Them! Is what matters!”

  Soon Tracy had Kazan laughing at stories of how they did things at Metro, the attitudes of the producers in charge, the workings of the clattering assembly line that ground out the product. “At lunch,” Tracy related, “Mervyn LeRoy was raving about a book he’d bought. ‘It’s got everything,’ he said. ‘Surprise, great characters, an important theme, fine writing! But,’ he said, ‘I think we can lick it.’ Honest. That’s what he said!” And Kazan, spiritually, threw in the towel. “We both laughed and we were buddies, he and I, I his admirer, he my star, and I had no fight left in me. Friendship had defeated me.”

  Undercurrent finished in early May, and Hepburn made a quick trip east to see her parents. Tracy stationed himself in Phoenix, where he occasionally went to paint for “occupational therapy”—dark, brooding desert landscapes, abstract to the point of being more about color and mood than representation, “just putting paint on cardboard,” as Louise characterized it, but producing, over the space of a few years, several paintings that were, in her judgment, “very unusual and very good.” Fanny Brice had gotten him started, sensing “a nervous time” and sending over a whole outfit—paint, oil, brushes, palette. Though he dismissed what he did as “daubing,” he was downright jovial by the time he got down to work on The Sea of Grass, explaining to Earl Wilson that he was just a supporting player in the picture and that Kate was the true star. “You want to come out and watch Her Highness? It’ll be very educational.”

  On the set, Wilson observed Hepburn in slacks, a towel around her head, congenial at first, less so as she realized he wasn’t going to leave. (“Oh, are you still here?” she said after a costume change. “I thought we’d be able to avoid you.”) Tracy knew the press irritated her, and it amused him when he could get people like Wilson to linger. “I did a scene that will revolutionize the industry,” he began dryly, encouraging the columnist to stick around. “I walked over to a wagon and put a basket in it, and then I walked down the road. I did that whole gigantic scene without forgetting one thing. Of course, I didn’t have any lines. You do a scene like that 15 times and you get silly. Now you know why actors go nuts.” He went on to say that was why he wanted to get out of the movies entirely and go back to the stage.

  Kazan was fond of multiple takes but made a calculated decision not to try and direct Tracy very much, knowing he would likely alienate his two stars without substantially improving the picture. “Tracy was great in take one,” he said, “okay in take two. About take four he began to go down, and by take six he was not very good. After take seven he just wouldn’t do any more. He’d say, ‘What do you want?’ ”

  Kazan, observed actor Melvyn Douglas, seemed to want “bursts of energy and an undertone of malevolence” he simply couldn’t get from Tracy. “Spence projected a heavy, relaxed authority. He was wonderfully skillful but, finally, did not do what the director requested.” Giving up on him, Kazan found Hepburn more accepting, and his one great achievement on The Sea of Grass was the unusually restrained performance he managed to coax from her. “Spence and Hepburn were lovers, and she was very protective of him,” said Kazan. “She’d watch him shoot and say, ‘Isn’t Spence wonderful?’ And I’d think, ‘He’s only giving a tenth of what he’s got.’ In one scene, he was supposed to come in from the open plains where it was snowing and he’d take a little water, throw it on his face, and make an entrance. His shoes looked like they had just been shined. I never could get him to stretch himself.”

  With director Elia Kazan, who, for myriad reasons, found The Sea of Grass a frustrating experience. (AUTHOR’S COLLECTION)

  When Tracy told Earl Wilson he wanted to get out of movies altogether and go back to the stage, he wasn’t just saying it for effect. Kate had committed to As You Like It for the Theatre Guild on the understanding that Tracy would also do something in the fall. In May, just as The Sea of Grass was getting under way, the Guild’s Lawrence Langner came west, where the decision was made to go ahead with the sets and the costumes. “Now Kate,” Langner urged, “don’t sell yourself into slavery for another five years when you can be supporting me and Spencer by working for us in Shakespeare. As soon as Spencer quits, I am going to set the two of you up in a wonderful company which will go to London and will be known as the ‘Old Trics’—the ‘Old Trics’ would be much better than the ‘Old Vics.’ ”

  Laurence Olivier had brought the Old Vic to New York with a company that included Margaret Leighton, Ralph Richardson, and Miles Malleson, and Langner proposed a similar setup for Tracy and Hepburn. “Everyone here is talking about Laurence Olivier,” Langner said in a letter to Tracy on June 6, “and the reason isn’t because he gives any one special performance (except in the case of Oedipus), but because they are seeing him in four different parts, playing old men, middle-aged men, etc. No trick to any good actor, but the public has gone wild with enthusiasm. Please consider very seriously a proposition that—when your contract is up—you and Kate, with the Guild, form a repertory company in which you would play in four or five masterpieces and set the country on fire by bringing back some of the real old-time theatre.” Among the titles Langner proposed were Dodsworth, The Devil’s Disciple, and O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms. “Hope you will discuss this with Kate before she commits herself to another five with M-G-M. The Theatre Guild is willing, as part of this proposition, to form an independen
t pictures corporation to make one outstanding picture each year in which you and Kate appear and in which, in addition to receiving your salary, you would also both have a share on a capital gains basis, so that you would only be paying 25% tax to the government.”

  Tracy mulled the proposition over, talked with Leo Morrison, and proposed to M-G-M that he go to a straight $110,000 per picture, drawing no salary between films as he was currently doing. An interoffice memo summarized his reasoning:

  He stated that he does not want to feel under obligation to the studio, which he would be if he continued to accept compensation when he is not working. He also feels that he does not want to be placed in the position that he had been two or three times in the past when a question has arisen as to whether or not he will do a picture and Mr. Mannix has called his attention to the fact that he has been on salary. He stated that the studio will not be able to get five pictures every two years and, as a matter of fact, will get only three or four at the most. He is perfectly willing to be paid on the basis of the pictures he does, even though it will mean less compensation to him than under the present agreement.