James Curtis

by Spencer Tracy: A Biography

  There was now a further narrowing of his world, a result of both ill health and acquiescence. Kate became his full-time physician, the one who slept in the room at the other end of the hall, the one at the other end of the buzzer he always kept at the side of his bed. “She was one of the best doctors he ever had,” said Dr. Covel. “And when they were together, happily, I think, he didn’t feel he had the need for [the alcohol, the barbiturates, and the amphetamines]…They were just devoted to one another. Just violently interested in each other’s welfare. They worshiped one another.”

  Katharine Houghton saw it from a more pragmatic angle: “Once he was sort of an invalid, Kate no longer had to worry about his dalliances. They had their ‘quiet little life’ as she called it, and she and he thrived on the stability of their routine.”

  There were chest pains, which had to be checked to make sure they weren’t something new. They usually turned out to be muscular, but then there were also the colds and rashes, malaise and nausea. “And, of course, they were all major problems for him. Somebody who was a little more stable wouldn’t have called a doctor. [To him] these were major things, major episodes.” On December 8 his heart was skipping beats, an old problem that had persisted for decades.

  “I talked to him at length at home and it became apparent that much of the agitation was because Kate and I were urging him to take exercise. And he got upset about that. And the skipped beats were because he got upset about us advising him to get off his fanny and do something instead of sitting in that wonderful chair he had. And then the skipped beats made him even less inclined to get out of his chair. It was a vicious cycle.”

  Among those who found their way to St. Ives in the days following Hepburn’s occupancy were some of the Catholic priests who wrote to Tracy, men who, in many cases, came of age at a time when he was redefining the public face of the church in San Francisco and the Boys Town pictures. While Kate had no personal interest in religious dogma of any sort, she readily indulged the spiritual needs Spence so clearly had without ever really understanding just how deeply held they were. One such priest who made the trek up Doheny was Eugene Kennedy, a professor of psychology at Loyola University, Chicago, who had written in the days following the news of Tracy’s brush with death. Father Kennedy found himself struck by the few distinctive accents that softened the room in which Tracy spent so much of his time—the stormy Vlaminck seascape above the desk, the stuffed goose suspended in full flight, the bowls of freshly cut flowers. He found his host clad in tan slacks and a dark blue cardigan, clutching a ball for Lobo.

  “Your letter touched me very much,” Tracy told him as they entered his bedroom, stark in its simplicity. “To hear from priests and nuns who were praying for me …” His eyes glistened as he reached for a wooden Madonna he had found in Chamonix. “This is something I truly love,” he said, barely above a whisper. “It’s so simple …” Dinner was ready—roasted stuffed chicken as prepared by Ida Gheczy of George Cukor’s staff—but there was still a minute or two to talk without Kate overhearing. “You know,” Tracy continued, “I thought about being a priest once; I guess every Catholic kid does, or did anyway. I don’t know how they feel with all these changes taking place. Now Pope John XXIII, he was my kind of Pope. But with this Vatican II, I’m not sure that priests believe in sin anymore or still hear confessions.” He paused a moment, then caught the priest’s eyes.

  “You still know how to?” he asked.

  In the lean times that followed the dissolution of Ealing, William Rose tinkered with the idea of a play, a farce concerning a white family in South Africa whose only daughter appears one day with a black man she is intent upon marrying. By 1958 Rose had the story fully developed for the stage. In 1959 and again in 1961, he tried without success to interest various people, including Stanley Kramer, in filming it. At the time, Kramer naturally thought of Sidney Poitier, who was soon to star in Kramer’s Pressure Point—a picture he was producing but not directing—but both he and Rose were in the midst of preparing It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and there wasn’t any time—or creative energy—left to expend on the development of another comedy. The idea did, however, stick in Kramer’s mind, and one day on the set of Mad World he mentioned it to Tracy.

  “The substance of that conversation was, ‘I don’t know whether I will ever do it, but Rose has a hell of an idea, a hell of a part for you.’ And I said, ‘I think what would be terribly interesting—I don’t know whether she is interested, but co-starring you and Katharine Hepburn in starring roles as a vehicle …’ The role I described to Mr. Tracy was a successful, liberal man who was a father, head of a family, very well off, substantial, married to a modern woman, liberal. All I can recall is the liberal aspect of the gentleman in question in the story.” Kramer, apart from work, saw Tracy a few times a year. At some point Tracy asked, “What happened to it?”

  Mad, Mad World completed Kramer’s commitment to United Artists, and in August 1962 he signed a three-picture deal with Columbia that was to commence with Ship of Fools. Kramer’s second film was to have been Andersonville, an ambitious blending of MacKinlay Kantor’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel and the 1959 Broadway play The Andersonville Trial. He worked nearly two years on a screenplay, first with Millard Kaufman, later with Abby Mann, but the commercial failure of Ship of Fools soured his relationship with the studio. “When they budgeted it—and we started to build sets down in Georgia—it was too much money for them. But they had a commitment to me and they said, ‘We’ll go for any picture up to $3 million to get rid of your commitment, to pay you off.’ ”

  At the time, Bill Rose was in California, completing work on The Flim Flam Man, a one-off for producer Lawrence Turman and 20th Century-Fox. When told that Andersonville was about to be abandoned, Rose pressed Kramer to do one of his original stories.

  I pointed out that I had profited enormously by my standards from our previous association, and that a film I had written the previous year called The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming was also prospering, and that I was in a position to be of service to him and would like to be. Stanley, I recall, said that the difficulty was in finding a story. I assured him I had a hundred stories and urged him to stop thinking in terms of a story and to start thinking in terms of what I call “marquee value.” I recall saying specifically, “Who are the actors with whom you most like to work?” Stanley reflected and mentioned first Spencer Tracy as being the man for whom he had the most respect and affection in the business, but he pointed out that Mr. Tracy had been unwell and had not worked professionally since our first venture, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. He said it would be marvelous to have a story which would suit the talents of both Spencer Tracy and Miss Katharine Hepburn. I assured him that such a story would not be difficult to write, and asked what other actors he most enjoyed working with. He then said that his association with Sidney Poitier had been a particularly happy one and that he had great admiration for him. At that point, I said with some enthusiasm that if he got a pretty girl to play the part of Mr. Tracy’s and Miss Hepburn’s daughter he had the entire cast for the racial prejudice comedy which I had been trying to sell him for several years. Stanley was almost totally unimpressed.

  Kramer, however, mentioned the idea of combining Tracy, Hepburn, and Poitier in a picture to Mike Frankovich, who was in charge of production at Columbia. “He took the ball,” Kramer said, “and discussed it at New York and we had a carte blanche on the material.” He then spoke to Tracy: “I decided to go ahead with that idea of Rose’s that I talked to you a long time about. He’s very enthusiastic about it and I don’t feel I can make the picture without you.”

  Tracy said, “I’m in.”

  “I want Kate to do that other part,” Kramer added. He spoke to Hepburn later that same day.

  I said that I thought it was possible that the woman’s role was as good or better than the role I was asking Tracy to play. Her response to that was, “Well, it doesn’t have to be if he’s go
ing to do it and if the role is at all reasonable, you know, I’d be interested in certainly doing it.” I mentioned to them at the time that I hoped to speak to Sidney Poitier sometime directly after that, and that I was hopeful I could get him to play the part because I don’t know who else I would want for it, and his part might not be as large as theirs in the film, so it bothered me as to whether or not he would take it. But I said I would certainly, on my own background with him, approach him on the strongest possible level.

  This was, Kramer emphasized, before they had a script—it was just an idea and a package. “I told Mr. Tracy and Miss Hepburn we were trying to make a comedy of miscegenation.” Shortly thereafter, Kramer flew to New York and met Sidney Poitier at the Russian Tea Room. Poitier was enthusiastic about the idea of handling it as a comedy. “He, at the time, agreed that he thought it would be an adventure, and he told me that I had carte blanche to go ahead and feel he would be part of the project.”

  It was only then that Kramer got back in touch with Bill Rose. “Stanley, who was in California, called me in the Channel Islands in Jersey and said, ‘I must have been out of my mind.’ I asked why and he said, ‘That story. I want it.’ I said, ‘Which story?’ He said, ‘The race comedy.’ He said that he had spoken to Tracy and to Miss Hepburn and to Poitier and that all three had reacted with great excitement and enthusiasm and that he had had time to think about the project and that he was determined to do it. He asked if I had been serious in my proposal, and I said that I had been.”

  On July 5, 1966, Columbia formally agreed that Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier, and Samantha Eggar were preapproved for the project. Rose would receive $50,000 for his original story and another $150,000 for the screenplay (plus 7.5 percent of the profits). “My suggestions,” said Kramer, “encompassed a Negro maid who was involved in the story, the priest, but Mr. Rose had the fire for this story. He had the last scene written in the story, which he could recite almost verbatim as it finally appeared on the film up to and inclusive of the line, ‘Screw all the bigots. The thing for you to do is get married.’ He worked all the ideas backwards from that, really, because that was the theme of it, the importance of it.”

  The development of the script took place during nighttime walks and meetings held in the drugstore at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. “One of the things to which we devoted a good deal of time during those discussions,” said Rose,

  was the question of the professional status of any of the central characters, and I recall specifically advancing the notion that the tone of the entire production was going to be very firmly set by the personality of Miss Hepburn. I asked that whereas Mr. Tracy was perfectly believable and acceptable in roles which ranged from a high court judge to an impoverished Cuban fisherman, that Miss Hepburn appeared to me to have distinct limitations and, for want of a better American word, an excess of class. Thus, it seemed to me it would make no sense if she played, say, the wife of a cop on the beat whose daughter became involved with a Negro cab driver. We discussed various possibilities for the character that Mr. Tracy was ultimately to portray, bearing in mind that he had to be a character of such class or status that it would be wholly credible for a personality of Miss Hepburn’s obvious status and class to have married. We considered among other possibilities that Tracy might be a United States senator or that he might be the head of a large engineering firm.

  Tracy had reached a point in his life where offers had slowed to a trickle, primarily on the perception around town that he was either retired or too sick to work. Hepburn’s absence from the marketplace only reinforced such notions, and so it came as a surprise in mid-July when he attended a wedding reception for Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow. Kate had gone ahead with George Cukor, the bride’s godfather, and Tracy drove separately, pulling up at Edie and Bill Goetz’s house in his familiar old Thunderbird, the first time anyone had seen him in months. “He had no thought of going,” Cukor said, “but was appreciative of the invitation. Then he thought he might go, and he vacillated back and forth. Finally, he did attend the reception, and stayed only a little while, but of course he was the hit of the affair. He always enjoyed himself once he arrived somewhere … but he just hated to go.”

  The appearance established to the Hollywood elite that he wasn’t dead quite yet and indirectly prompted an offer from producer William Dozier to make a cameo appearance on the hit TV series Batman. Dozier tried appealing to Tracy’s sense of fun, suggesting that he must have grandchildren who would get “a big boot” out of his appearing on the show. In his reply, Tracy acknowledged that it would indeed be fun “but not for my first ‘live’ time on TV. I expect to be vastly overpaid for that.”2

  Subsequently, Bill Self brought a more substantial proposal, the idea of building an entire series around a character Tracy would play. “I was now president of Fox Television,” he said,

  and I ran into Cukor on the lot, who was doing something. He said, “Bill, have you seen Spence and Kate lately?” I said, “No, I haven’t. It’s my fault. I’ve been busy.” He said, “You know, he’s very fond of you and he knows how well you’ve done. He watches some of your shows. You really ought to give him a call.” I said, “Well, I certainly will.” So, remembering some of my past experiences, I called Kate. And I said, “You know, I’d love to come see Spencer, but I never know where I stand with Spence. I’m cautious to call him up.” “Oh,” she says, “call him up. He’d really love to see you.” I said, “What do you think he’d say if I offered him a job?” She laughed. And she said, “Go ahead.”

  So, anyway, I went up to see them … and he couldn’t have been nicer. And she couldn’t have been nicer. We reminisced and told some stories, and I said, “Spence, I’m going to suggest something to you and I hope you’re not offended.” He said, “Go ahead.” I said, “Well, I have a series I’m planning called Bracken’s World. It takes place on a movie lot, we have our own police department, our own fire department, our own schools, chorus kids and all that kind of stuff. Bracken is the lead, and if you would consider it, I could structure every script so that your scenes were very confined.” I knew he wasn’t well. “Most of the time, when you see Bracken, you see him in his office. People come to him. Or if you want to vary it a little bit, you come to a projection room. But it’s not a series where you’d have to do a lot of physical things. And you play the head of the studio.” He said, “Well, that’s kind of appealing. What are you going to pay me?” I said, “Spence, I’m not going to discuss with you what I’m going to pay you. I know you’re with the William Morris Agency and Abe Lastfogel.” He said, “No, no. Come on Bill, we’ve known each other a long time. What are you going to pay me?”

  So I said, “Well, I didn’t come here prepared to discuss business with you. I have no idea.” “Well,” he said, “you must have some idea.” I said, “Well. I know what television in general can afford to pay. I will ad-lib to you a formula, in that I will pay you $10,000 a day for every day you work, with a minimum of maybe two days a week that you get paid no matter what. If you work three days, you get $30,000. If you work two days you get $20,000. I just know that we can afford that; whether it’s fair or not, I don’t know.” So he says, “Well, that doesn’t sound too bad.” He looked at Kate and said, “What do you think?” and she said that didn’t sound too bad. So, anyway, we had that conversation. He said, “I’ll let you know. Let me think about it.” Kate walked me to the door, and she said, “Bill, Spence needs it, but I want to warn you—he may not be up to it. We’re praying that he can get through the new picture.” She said, “I wouldn’t count on it.”

  Anyway, I took all this information back to NBC, and Herb Schlosser, who was head of West Coast at that time, said, “What’s he look like?” I said, “I beg your pardon? What do you mean? What’s he look like? He looks like Spencer Tracy.” He said, “Well, is he too old?” I said, “You got to be kidding. This is the biggest Academy Award winner that would ever be on your network. You ought to thank your
stars that he’s even considering it.” And he said, “I’d like to meet him.” I said, “Well, let me see what I can do.” So I called Spence and said, “Herb Schlosser, the head of West Coast, blah, blah, blah, wants to meet you.” Spence says, “Why does he want to meet me?” I said, “Well, you know, he wants to be sure I’m not lying to him about the possibility of your doing it. And he’d like to report to his boss in New York that he actually met with you about it.” He said, “He just wants to see if I’m too old or something?” I said, “Of course not.” So we set up a meeting.

  Schlosser was one hour late to the meeting up at Spencer’s house. And they were fuming. I was embarrassed. So the doorbell finally rang, and Kate goes to the door and opens it and says, “Are you Mr. Schlosser?” He says, “Yes.” She said, “You’re very rude.” He said, “Well, I apologize.” That’s the way the meeting started. So, at the end of the meeting, Schlosser left, and he and I walked out to the street. He said, “Well, he looks fine.” So, I went back in and Spence was showing all this interest. I went back to my office, and then I got a phone call from Abe Lastfogel. He said, “Bill, what the hell are you doing? I’ve known you twenty years. You know you shouldn’t talk to Spence about money.” I said, “I know that. He doesn’t know it.” And I went through the whole thing about what happened. He said, “Well, look. We’re not going to work for that kind of money. If Spence does a television series, and he likes your idea, he’s going to have to have ownership, he’s going to have to have residuals, he’s going to have to have some controls, et cetera and so forth.” I said, “Fine. If he really goes forward, we’ll sit down and talk about all of those things. At the moment, I’m not sure he’s really going to do it.”