James Curtis

by Spencer Tracy: A Biography

  “I remember him standing in the large tile foyer,” she said.

  All of my family were assembled: grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. And, of course, Kate. I still have a vision of him standing there turning his hat in his hands and being quite nervous. I guess he must have come a little before lunch, and an autumn storm was brewing. At the dining table my older brother asked him to recite “Casey at the Bat” because we’d been told by my Aunt Katy that Spencer could do that very well. My grandfather, who was generally very suspicious of any of Kate’s beaux, wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about the performance. Spencer, after all, was a married man. My grandfather didn’t know what he was about, what he was up to. The storm got worse and worse during lunch, and the little sailboats moored near the big breakwater south of the house were beginning to pull their moorings. Kate was watching them, as was everyone else in the family, but I don’t think Spencer was. All of a sudden, Kate got up and said in a loud voice, “Everybody drop your pants and follow me!” So everyone, except the young kids, leapt up and took off their shoes and pants and tore out to the beach. The little boats were about to crash into our jetty. Spencer didn’t move. He just sat there and said, “This whole family is nuts.”

  I don’t remember his ever visiting the house again. I do, however, remember my Aunt Kate mentioning something about other visits on various occasions in the late seventies or early eighties. Driving back to New York City on I-95 she’d say, “You see that Howard Johnson’s?” I’d say, “Yes.” She’d say, “Spencer used to stay there when I would come east to see Mother and Dad at Fenwick.”

  A dual portrait, apparently penned during the making of State of the Union. The inscription, in Tracy’s barely legible hand, reads: “To the old one with love from THE PRESIDENT.” (ACADEMY OF MOTION PICTURE ARTS AND SCIENCES)

  Tracy returned that same evening to Boston, where his test results pointed to an ulcer and not the malignancy he had feared. He met with Seymour Gray, a gastroenterologist and associate professor at the Harvard School of Medicine, who saw before him a “tortured soul” who had “an enormous guilt complex about his mute [sic] son, which he interpreted as a punishment from God for his sins.”

  Tracy went back to New York, where rehearsals for As You Like It were under way, and after a couple of days with little to do, flew home to Los Angeles, where Dr. Dennis affirmed all of Dr. Gray’s findings. Nausea overtook him, and he spent nearly two weeks without an appetite. He met with Benny Thau at the studio, confirming a tentative start date for his next picture, but it wasn’t until he went out to the ranch for dinner on November 9 that he began to feel better.

  As You Like It opened in New Haven on December 8 before a capacity audience that included Dr. and Mrs. Hepburn and the playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder. Any doubts about Kate’s fitness for the role of Rosalind were dispelled by a spirited, if not particularly commanding performance, and she was accorded seven curtain calls. Moving on to Boston, the show settled in at the Colonial Theatre, where Spence came to see her at Christmas, another sell-out engagement just prior to a limited Broadway run. Adam’s Rib had already been put into release, its New York opening set for the twenty-fifth at the Capitol. Rain and threatening weather brought huge crowds. Bolstered by strong notices and all the advance press accorded As You Like It, the picture stayed a total of twenty-four days before pushing out into the boroughs, where it faded quickly—more quickly than anyone expected.

  “All the Katharine Hepburn–Spencer Tracy pictures I made were just mediocre successes,” Larry Weingarten lamented toward the end of his life. “When they got out of the big cities the fellows just didn’t understand them and the women—they didn’t go, it was too sophisticated for them.” There was also the scattered picketing of theaters from Kate’s presumed support of Henry Wallace and the Progressives.

  Ironically, word-of-mouth benefited Adam’s Rib more than any of the previous Tracy-Hepburn pairings, and it ended up being the most profitable of all their pictures after Keeper of the Flame. Spence’s aunt Jenny, now living near her daughter in Renton, Washington, caught the buzz firsthand when she saw a doctor for stomach complaints—the family nerves that afflicted them all. “Mrs. Feely,” the doctor told her, “you should get out and do things. Go to a movie, get your mind off your worries. I saw the most wonderful movie last night—you should see it. I’ve laughed all day long. The name of it is Adam’s Rib.”

  Jenny, a steely tone suddenly entering her voice: “No … I haven’t seen it yet, but I suppose that I’ll go.”

  “It’s Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn,” the man continued, not knowing when to let up. “It’s a riot—you really should see it.”

  “I don’t think you’d laugh so much,” she snapped back, “if it was your nephew making a fool of himself!”

  “That was hard for her to take,” her daughter Jane commented. “Oh, dear God. Katharine. Katharine Hepburn. ‘The hussy.’ It was always the woman [never the man]. Oh, heavens no. You know that he was dragged by his neck into that unholy alliance by this woman of no principles whatsoever. And my mother was not that kind—she was a very bright woman, an intellectual Catholic, very well informed. But on certain subjects like that, [the instinct of] the mother and her cub took over. It was never on your family’s side; there was no fault there. That double standard—the lace curtains. Appearances must be kept up.”

  Andrew Tracy was the only member of the family to have actually met Kate Hepburn during one of his infrequent visits to California. “I don’t think this Katharine Hepburn is such a big deal,” he said, clearly and instantly taken with her. “She stuck her paw out and said, ‘Hello, Uncle Andrew.’ That was enough for me.”

  The situation with Louise was worrisome, the tension thick between Spence and his brother Carroll. Andrew’s son Frank could remember his father describing his nephew’s dressing room on the M-G-M lot, a living room and a bedroom alongside Gable’s on the second floor of the building. “Sometimes Spence came in and went in his bedroom, laid down and took a nap. I remember Dorothy would be complaining about his treatment of Carroll, that Carroll would come home all shaky and white and pale, practically in tears and ready for a rubber room. And, meanwhile, Spence was back up there in his dressing room sound asleep, oblivious to the hellacious behavior that had caused this poor man to come apart.”

  Malaya went into distribution six weeks after Adam’s Rib. A pulpy melodrama that held little sway with city audiences, it played off well in the sticks, its modest cost a considerable factor in its commercial success. Tracy returned to L.A. on January 6, 1950, and was present on the sixteenth when Louise’s father, Allienne Treadwell, died in San Diego at the age of eighty-one. Spence had met the old man, a practicing lawyer who came up to Encino once in a while for dinner and to borrow money. Louise was bitter when she was young, but she had long since made her peace with him. “You have to forgive,” she said. “Everybody does. You have to believe everybody does the best they can under the circumstances.”

  The father was, in the opinion of Alathena Smith, at the root of Louise’s coolness. She was, as Dr. Smith put it, a “blood-red bleeding heart locked into a blue block of ice,” for she had been hurt by a man before Spence. “Don’t blame this on deafness,” she warned Jane Ardmore, who was planning a book on Louise and the clinic. “She adored her father and her father left her mother.” The memory of loss, the aversion to pain, held Louise at an emotional distance from even those closest to her. She got around it by giving herself to the work of the clinic and to young parents who reminded her of Spence and herself when they were confused and scared and unsure of what to do. “She shows it in the kindness in her letters,” said Dr. Smith in 1972. “She’ll spend 45 minutes on a paragraph to help some mother … She puts no limits on the help that I give to parents.”

  Louise was still invisible to much of the film colony, a solitary figure at her husband’s previews, sometimes with John but just as often completely alone. “Occasionally we sat ne
ar her at some of the Tracy-Hepburn previews,” said screenwriter Lenore Coffee, “and she had the air of an interested member of the audience; of course, no one knew her by sight.” In the November 1949 issue of Modern Screen, Louise was featured in an article by Hedda Hopper, who made no secret of her dislike for Katharine Hepburn. Its title: “Hollywood’s Forgotten Wives.”

  Hepburn, meanwhile, was slowly tightening her grip on Tracy, moving him away from Leo Morrison and into the hands of Bert Allenberg, who was now managing her own affairs at the William Morris Agency. Morrison was stunned when the process began, first by the appointment of Ross Evans as Tracy’s interim representative in August 1949, then by the formal request for a letter of termination at the end of the calendar year. Once payment in full had been acknowledged for all outstanding claims, Tracy gave his agent of twenty years a bonus “in appreciation of past services” even as he continued to duck his calls.

  Kate also disliked Spence’s ongoing residency at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where managing partner Hernando Courtright allowed him to live rent-free in exchange for being seen regularly in the Polo Lounge, where he sat quietly sipping tea in the late afternoon and signing autographs for the guests. He hated being put on display and had to be goaded by his secretary into doing it, but the simplicity of hotel life suited him. (“I’ve always liked to live in small places,” he once said, “because I live a small life.”) The arrangement horrified Hepburn, who began looking around for quarters where he could be content and cared for, and yet shielded from the public.

  If, as Tracy sometimes said, acting was reacting, then no role could possibly have afforded him a better showcase than that of Stanley T. Banks, the hapless hero of Father of the Bride. The book was by Edward Streeter, a New York banking executive who, in a former life, had been a war correspondent and travel writer. Streeter’s infrequent works, starting with 1919’s Dere Mabel, distinguished him as a chronicler of the put-upon everyman, a wryly observant Boswell of human nature. When Father made the rounds in manuscript form, it was snapped up by the Book-of-the-Month Club, then by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which paid $100,000 for the film rights. As soon as word of the purchase got out, comedian Jack Benny cornered Dore Schary at a party and said that he wanted to play Banks. According to Pan Berman, who had responsibility for the project, Schary said, “Great, marvelous, we’d love to have you, you’ve got it.” And then he dropped his fait accompli in Berman’s lap.

  “ ‘Dore,’ I said, ‘Jack Benny is a wonderful personality, but he simply won’t do. I know we don’t even have to ask [Vincente] Minnelli, but if you want to …’ ” Minnelli had directed Madame Bovary under Berman’s supervision and liked the idea of following it with a comedy.

  We did test Jack Benny and he made a valiant effort, but it was terrible because it wasn’t for him. I went in and told Dore, “It’s hopeless.” Dore said, “I don’t agree with you. I think it’s great.” I remained steadfast. “Well, who are you going to get?” he asked. I said Spencer. “You’ll never get Spencer to do it.” “I’ll get him.” “Well, then, you’ll have to call Jack and tell him we’re not going to use him.” “I’ve got to call Jack? He’s been a dear friend for years. We dine in each other’s homes once a month. We’re all part of a gang together. Why should I have to call? If I had talked to him to begin with, I would have told him no in the first place.” So I did. Jack didn’t talk to me for ten years after that.

  Tracy, said Berman, took about a week to make up his mind. Schary recalled a more complicated and angst-ridden process, which played itself out over a period of months and followed a pattern he came to regard as typical: “First there would be reservations about the original material, followed by a crashing refusal; then a quiet talk with suggestions of how it could be fashioned to suit Spence. This heart-to-heart would be followed by a wave of enthusiasm, later dispelled when the first script was born. With doubts returned, another conference had to be called, suggestions of how to change and improve the script would be on the agenda, and finally we would have Tracy’s approval.”

  Assigned the screenplay was the husband-wife team of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, both of whom thought the book “darling.” Goodrich, moreover, had been courted by Ed Streeter as a young actress. “It’s nice to think of my brainchild sitting in your lap like Charlie McCarthy while you put ideas in his head,” Streeter commented in a letter to Goodrich.

  Tracy’s vacillations brought other potential candidates to the fore, and Streeter claimed to have heard unfounded reports “ranging from Harpo Marx to Paul Robeson.” Fredric March and Walter Pidgeon were candidates, and even Charles Laughton got mentioned at one particularly grim point. “Spencer Tracy is the one I wanted,” Streeter insisted, “but I heard that he was having contract trouble. March is obviously out, Laughton is my idea of nobody, and as for Benny I would nominate Abbott and Costello. Better than that, I would nominate myself.”

  Tracy was confirmed for Father of the Bride just as Adam’s Rib went before the cameras. Kate arranged a dinner at which Minnelli made his pitch. “With you,” the director told him, “this picture could be a little classic of comedy. Without you, it’s nothing.” Tracy, recalled Minnelli, was delighted. “He’d heard other people were being tested for the part, and he thought we weren’t interested in him. All he’d wanted was to be wanted. Once Spencer accepted, the rest of the cast fell into place. It took no great imagination to cast beautiful young Elizabeth Taylor as the bride. Joan Bennett, with the same coloring as Elizabeth, seemed a logical choice to play the mother.”

  By then, the script had gone through two complete iterations and was headed for a third. After an initial bout of anxieties, the Hacketts did a sterling job with Streeter’s simple yet universal tale, the withering of Mr. Banks translating neatly into three acts of progressive poverty and befuddlement. His plans go awry, and his desperation is evident when he offers his daughter $1,500 in cash to elope. (She thinks he is kidding.) He eventually falls completely from his family’s notice, underfoot as the wedding planner, the caterer, and the florist take over. In the end he slogs wearily upstairs, the forgotten man who has to pay for it all, an image eventually adapted for the film’s opening sequence in which Banks, his house strewn with the detritus of a chaotic reception, massages an aching foot as he empties confetti and rice from his shoe. “I would like to say a few words about weddings…,” he begins.

  Tracy’s immersion in the role permitted him to inhabit a character as cartoonish as Banks and deliver a fully dimensional human being. In a scene around the family dinner table, Stanley first learns that his daughter is “in love” with somebody named Buckley and that she intends to get married. Alternately skeptical, peevish, combative, and shell-shocked, Tracy managed the beats with a musical precision, never leaning into the role but simply allowing it to happen. “Who is this Buckley anyway? And what’s his last name? I hope it’s better than his first one. Where the devil does he come from? And who does he think is going to support him? If he thinks I am he’s got another thing coming …”

  He was, said Minnelli, an inspiration: “His instincts were infallible. He knew how to throw the unimportant things away, and he knew how to create the illusion of throwing the important things away too, so that they were inscribed on your mind. His way of speaking made you feel you’d stumbled on a great truth. You saw real life reflected in his face … and also strength.”

  In choosing to let Tracy set the pace of the film, Minnelli took advantage of his inner stillness, a steadiness about his eyes and head that suggested simplicity while masking a furious turning of wheels. “There wasn’t a better man at comedy. He wasn’t a mugger, at least not in scenes with other actors. The facial contortions came when he was alone and unobserved.” Minnelli liked to point out a scene in which Banks mediates a reconciliation between his daughter and her fiancé and then finds himself stranded as they rush into each other’s arms. “The father is left standing there, the unwanted third man, trying to figure out a way to gracefully
exit … Spencer’s reading was the essence of comedy, because it was achingly true. And he knew how well he’d done it, for no one had greater reason to feel secure about his ability than Spencer.”

  Actor Don Taylor, playing the unexceptional Buckley Dunstan, hadn’t yet met Tracy when called upon to play his first important scene, the business of Kay Banks (Elizabeth Taylor) having slammed a car door on his hand. “We talked; we did the scene,” said Taylor.

  “Who is this Buckley anyway?” Tracy, Joan Bennett, and Elizabeth Taylor in Father of the Bride (1950). (SUSIE TRACY)

  And Minnelli said, “Well, I think I’ll have to print that.” (Meaning, “Very good!”) But ol’ Spence said [growling], “No-o-o-o-o, Vincente, no, that’s no good!” And he turned to me and he said, “I’m Spencer Tracy.” I said, “I’m Don Taylor.” Nobody had introduced us. Of course, I was mesmerized by him in every facet—as an actor, as a human being, and, you know, as a fellow man. He said, “C’mon!” and the two of us walked around the stage. We walked around twice, and we rehearsed the scene, ad-libbed a little bit, put it together, and came back, and Tracy said, “NOW we’ll shoot it.” And we shot it, and Minnelli said, “Cut! Print!”

  Tracy hadn’t seen much of Joan Bennett since the completion of Me and My Gal, and her presence on the set clearly delighted him. They were like old lovers, sharing confidences and irreverent memories and occasionally even finishing each other’s sentences. “He was not quite as jovial as he used to be,” Bennett later remarked, “but he was still the good natured, wonderful actor that he’d always been.”

  Each morning, Tracy would breeze past his secretary’s office (“Top o’ the mornin’ Miss G.!”) and mount the stairs to his permanent dressing room, where Larry Keethe would be awaiting him. Even a modern-dress picture required close attention to wardrobe, and it was Keethe’s job to know what tie, what suit, what shirt was necessary for any given scene, down to the smallest detail. Interiors of the Banks home had been assembled on M-G-M’s Stage 26, where Tracy was always punctual for his nine o’clock call.