James Curtis

by Spencer Tracy: A Biography

  In a letter to a journalist, George Glass described the on-the-set situation as “tenser than tense.” There was a terrific sense of relief when Tracy reappeared on Wednesday morning and work on the sequence could finally began. The company was now five days behind schedule, but Kramer could see no way of picking up speed without exacerbating Tracy’s latent anxieties and risking the completion of the picture. The actors took their positions, and, after some preliminaries, Tracy began his oration:

  MATT

  I have a few things to say and you just might think they’re important. This has been a very strange day—I don’t think that’s putting it too strongly. I might even say it’s been an extraordinary day…

  The first day’s work was completed at 11:45 and Tracy went home to nap as he did on Thursday and Friday, working for the week a total of six hours and ten minutes. On Monday it took another two hours for Tracy to work up to the point where, on Tuesday, the fifth day, he could make one of the most affecting speeches of his life. His call, as usual, was for ten o’clock, but Kramer, in concert with Bill Rose, had eliminated the last scene in the script, where the families gather at the airport to see John and Joey off to Geneva. This would be it—the end of the picture—and it couldn’t be done in the space of two hours. Tracy, for the last time on Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, would work a full day.

  Told by Mrs. Prentice, in a previous scene, that he has forgotten it all, forgotten what true passion is, Matt has remained out in the night air, pondering what she has said, what Christina has said, what John and Joey have said, and attempting to square it all with his own values and beliefs. Rose’s screenplay called for Matt to show fierce intensity, to shake his head, to register uncertainty, doubt, anxiety.

  Now he stands staring vacantly up into the night at where, when he was a boy, Heaven was said to be. His glance moves slowly but with the speed of light from star to star as he recalls exactly what it was like to love Christina as he first loved Christina. And it’s true: he had forgotten, and he knows it. He stands there, and his expression now reveals a kind of astonished wonder. He seems stunned. Quietly, but aloud:

  MATT

  I’ll be a son of a bitch…

  Tracy had dispensed with the tics and grimaces called for in the text, giving the audience a clean slate on which to overlay the character’s thoughts and transitions. Now he would give voice to his convictions and pay tribute to the woman who had made herself an indispensable part of his life for more than a quarter century. “And here I came to visit that particular day,” said Karen Kramer. “Kate came up to me: ‘You must be very quiet—Spence is working.’ I said, ‘Kate, I’ve been in the business many years. I’m not going to speak, so don’t worry about it.’ ‘All right,’ she said, ‘but you’ve got to be quiet to stay. This is a very important part of the picture.’ She was being a director. Spencer would just look and roll his eyes.”

  Seated next to Roy Glenn, Sr., a veteran of previous films with Sidney Poitier and the Amos ’n Andy TV series, Tracy began:

  MATT

  Now Mr. Prentice, clearly a most reasonable man, says that he has no wish to offend me and wants to know if I’m some kind of nut. And Mrs. Prentice says, like her husband, I’m a burnt-out old shell of a man who can’t even remember what it’s like to love a woman the way her son loves my daughter…

  There were breaks throughout the day, during which Tracy rested. “Our reaction shots were done without him, at least mine were,” said Katharine Houghton. “I vividly remember pretending like mad that I was watching and listening to him.” Kramer plotted Tracy’s movements around the room as if choreographing a dance number, the goal being to position Hepburn in the shot at significant moments, Spence, appropriately enough, in the foreground, Kate, eyes glistening, in the soft focus of the background.

  Tracy continued when filming resumed:

  And strange as it seems, that’s the first statement anybody’s made to me all day on which I’m prepared to take issue. Because I think you’re wrong. You’re as wrong as you can be. I admit that I hadn’t considered it. Hadn’t even thought about it. But I know exactly what he feels for her, and there is nothing—absolutely nothing—that your son feels for my daughter … that I didn’t feel for Christina. Old? Yes. Burnt out? Certainly. But I can tell you the memories are still there—clear … intact … indestructible. And they’ll still be there if I live to be a hundred and ten. Where John made his mistake, I think, was attaching so much importance to what her mother and I might think. Because in the last analysis it doesn’t matter a damn what we think. The only thing that matters is what they feel, and how much they feel … for each other. And if it’s half of what we felt … that’s everything.

  The catch in his voice was as genuine as anything he ever displayed on the screen, and, by all accounts, Kate’s tears were just as real. “It was a superb, moving, and flawless performance,” wrote Charles Champlin, the columnist and film critic for the Los Angeles Times, who had been allowed on the set to watch, “and when at last Stanley Kramer, gently enough, said, ‘Cut,’ there was a burst of applause.”

  Kramer captured reaction shots of them both, Kate, her lips quivering, Spence, smiling warmly, contentedly, back at her, and then the company broke for lunch. The afternoon was a long one, more resolution, a benediction of sorts for the two lovers soon to be off on their new life together. “Every person on that sound stage that afternoon became engrossed with Spencer Tracy’s character as that remarkable actor did his job,” Sidney Poitier wrote. “With unbelievable skill and finesse he dotted his i’s and flicked his commas, and hit his periods, and touched down lightly on his conjunctions on his way to making magic. We, his fellow actors in the scene, began falling under his spell until he had succeeded in converting all of us, one by one, into a single, captivated audience.”

  At the conclusion of the scene, Christina marches forward and gives her husband a firm shake of the hand, a wry, congratulatory gesture for finally coming to his senses, another Tracy-Hepburn fade-out based on restraint and good sense, as any other actress on the screen would have tearfully thrown her arms around him and bawled like a baby. “They didn’t need to embrace,” Kramer later explained. “They never did embrace. They needed only to have the foundation of something that was very special. That’s what you look for in your life all the time. They had it. Whether they had it in real life and in their performance is almost beside the point. They had it.”

  “They must have been very relieved when that scene was finished,” Katharine Houghton said. “It was the end of the film, most likely Tracy’s last film, and maybe even his last days. Everyone on the set knew he was ill, but I’m not sure they knew how ill. Kate knew. Kramer knew. I knew—just exactly what was at stake. After Spencer’s monologue the atmosphere on set was very emotional, but not entirely celebratory because one couldn’t help but think ahead and dread what was soon to come.”

  At the end of the day, Tracy put his arm around Kramer: “You know, Kiddo, if I die on the way home tonight, you are all right. You can release the picture because my scenes are finished, and you don’t need me for these last three days.”

  The pressure was off. He had done it.

  The cast came together again on May 19, Tracy and Hepburn making the scenes that would surround a little self-standing vignette in which the Draytons go out for ice cream and Matt backs into the souped-up jalopy of a belligerent black kid. Scene 73 showed their return to the house. Tracy was required to mount the stairs, turn, and deliver a furious tirade to Hepburn, then continue up the staircase to the second floor. Kramer wanted to see if Tracy could manage the entire scene in one continuous take, but it was soon apparent that he lacked the breath for it. “After one step,” said Marshall Schlom, “he was huffing and puffing.”

  Dorothy Gopadze—the venerated Miss G. of Tracy’s M-G-M days—had been waiting for a good time to bring her fourteen-year-old daughter to the studio. “He didn’t know we were on the set,” said Tina Gopadze. “He w
as so ill … Miss Hepburn sent word over to us: ‘Don’t let him see you.’ ”

  It was a grueling morning. Finally, Kramer broke up the scene, parceling it so that Tracy could deliver his lines in a medium shot without any climbing. “He came off and he was shaking,” said Tina.

  And then he looked at Mom and his eyes got wider and wider, and he started tearing up. He said, “Well! Funny thing your being here!” She said, “This is my daughter Tina.” He looked at me and said, “You’re the reason I lost Miss G.!” We all sat down on that set overlooking San Francisco, and it was with Mr. Poitier and Katharine Houghton and Miss Hepburn and Mr. Tracy. He and Mom talked a little bit. In the meantime, Miss Hepburn turned to me and said, “Don’t ever drink. Don’t ever smoke. You have to have a wonderful exemplary attitude. Do you play sports?” I said, “Yes, I do. I play tennis.” She said, “Good. Don’t end up like your mother by drinking and smoking. Your mother’s a wonderful person, but you must never do these things.” Mr. Tracy didn’t say anything, but he kept glancing over at me … They were done shooting for the day, and he wasn’t feeling well.

  On Saturday he again suffered shortness of breath. (“There are all kinds of scripts for these episodes, either real or anxiety or heart failure,” Dr. Covel commented. “You can’t be certain.”) It was good for him to have Sunday to rest up.

  On Monday, May 22, Tracy and Hepburn began the ice cream sequence on Columbia’s Stage 8 using the process plates made in San Francisco. “I rehearsed the ice cream eating scene with [Alexandra Hay],” Kate said, “because she had never done anything. I didn’t want her to blow when she was suddenly playing with Spencer. People got terrified, because they had this curious feeling that they were into something that was far different from just actor to actor. It was deep, exciting. And their minds went.”

  Later came the most basic of all process shots—a driving scene in a breakaway car. In the script, Matt is still boiling from an angry encounter at the drive-in.

  MATT

  What the hell is it today? Less than twelve

  percent of the people in this city are colored

  people, and I can’t even have a dish of Oregon

  Boysenberry Sherbert without running into one!

  “I remember we shot the scene several times,” said Marshall Schlom, “and as many times as he wanted to, he purposely mispronounced the name—for fun, of course. I think the flavor’s name had a ring to it that he loved, and he had a ball rolling the syllables around in his mouth … I remember sitting at dailies watching the scene several times, and I detected an ever-so-slight mispronunciation each time.” The version Kramer chose to use had Matt angrily pounding the steering wheel and substituting “Boozenberry” for “Boysenberry.” The next day, the two scenes with Hay were completed without incident.

  On Wednesday, May 24, D’Urville Martin, as Frankie, the kid with the roadster, played his scene with Tracy, again on the process stage. “I rehearsed quite a bit with Stanley Kramer,” Martin recalled.

  In his trailer, in his office…[Then] I rehearsed with Spencer Tracy. We rehearsed over and over and over. This little scene! And finally Kramer said to me, “You’re not going to do it like that, are you?” I said, “No, I’m waiting to do it for the cameras.” He said, “Okay, let’s roll the cameras.” Then he told me, “Look, for the first take, I want you to be really vicious, mean, cold, selfish.” And I was!

  Tracy reacted to the way that I did it. His face turned red, and he came back so real, so angry and violent, that it scared me. I thought maybe he was going to have a heart attack … In between takes, Katharine would go over to him, straighten his tie, tuck in his shirt. She was always doing that kind of thing to him between takes—brushing his hair—and he was always saying, “Awwww, shucks!” You know, like a big kid in a Jackie Cooper movie. He’d say, “Leave me alone!” But he wouldn’t mean it.

  One thing they did for me that I noticed they did for everybody on that set. [Martin had requested—and received—permission to observe on the set and was there every day.] No matter how big or how small, they treated everybody on that set as if they were the star. They made me feel that I was the greatest actor in the world. I mean, between takes they would compliment me and tell me how fantastic I was. The two of them … I noticed the patience that they had with all the other actors, like Cecil Kellaway. He only had a few lines in one scene, and they must have made about thirty takes just to get those few lines out right. They always encouraged him, and they were always patient, and they were always sort of festive, and they made him feel good. They made everybody feel as if they were the greatest thing since the wheel.

  (SUSIE TRACY)

  On Tracy’s final day on the picture, he was in at ten and finished at ten minutes to twelve.

  “How much will it cost to have it repaired?” he asked the kid with the roadster.

  “Well look at it!” Martin shouted. “Thirty or forty bucks it’ll cost! Did you see it? Stupid old man! You oughtn’t be allowed out! You ought to be put away someplace—in a home or something!”

  “Here!” Tracy returned savagely, stuffing a crumpled bill into Martin’s hand. “There’s fifty bucks! Don’t bother to have the thing fixed—buy a new one!!”

  When Stanley Kramer called, “Cut!” and then “Print!,” Ivan Volkman, Kramer’s production manager, stepped onto the set and addressed the crew. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “that was Mr. Tracy’s last shot.” The applause was instantaneous, vigorous. Tracy and Kramer met at the camera and embraced, the crew’s applause sweeping over them in waves. No one could have mistaken the weight of the moment. A career that had stretched nearly half a century—from the dusty wings of the long-demolished Palace Theatre in White Plains to the golden heyday of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, from Boys Town and San Francisco to Black Rock and Nuremberg—had drawn to a close. Tracy shook hands with Sam Leavitt, waved to Marshall Schlom, and slowly made his way to the stage door. At the doorway, he stopped, the applause still rumbling, waved, and then turned and exited.

  When the door closed behind him and the clapping died down, Kramer said, “That’s the last time you’ll ever see Spencer Tracy on film.” And Kate, who, during the shot, had been crouching to one side of the camera, lit into him, a white-hot flash of anger. “[T]hat made me wild,” she said. “I thought that was a silly thing to say. And I said to Stanley, ‘Why? You know?’ And poor Stanley was very upset. I attacked him.”

  That morning Hepburn had handed Marshall Schlom an envelope. He pocketed it, didn’t open it until they had finished work for the day. Inside were a check for one hundred dollars and a handwritten note:

  Dear Marshall

  With thanks and thanks and more thanks—for doing my duties—please get something you want— you deserve it—

  With affectionate gratitude from us both— ST and KH

  That evening a party for the cast and crew was held on Stage 8. “The party, accordingly, had a valedictory tone,” Charles Champlin wrote, “and there were lumps in the throat and tears which the good food and drink couldn’t set aside.” Hepburn explained Tracy’s absence by saying, “He gets too sentimental at things like this.” Kramer was uncharacteristically emotional, at one point on the verge of tears: “Have you ever seen an era end? Tracy was originally a legit actor, but he has become the greatest ‘movie actor.’ When I go out, I’d like to go out like he did.”

  Kate addressed the crowd, paying tribute to Kramer and to the people behind the scenes. “You are the people who make an actor able to act,” she told them. “I don’t know how many of you realize that. But I shall be everlastingly grateful to you. I know that your help made a helluva lot of difference to Spence.”

  Tracy, meanwhile, was home working the phone, elated, relieved, and a little surprised by it all. “Finished!” he cried as Garson Kanin came on the line. “Do you believe it? I don’t. I was betting against myself all the way. I owe me a fortune. I may welch. But finished. Are you impressed?”

  “
No,” Gar replied. “What impressed me was you starting.”

  “I get it,” he said. “Everybody’s down at the party. Both Kathies—everybody.”

  “Why not you?”

  “Hell, no. Too emotional. This is it. The Big Wrap-Up. I’ve retired.”

  “You should have gone to the party.”

  “I thought I might, but then right after the last shot today, Stanley said, ‘That’s the one!’ and I knew it was over and we shook hands and he started to cry and so did I, and I figured the hell with it and came home. I think I’ve got about five beers in me! But did you hear me, Jasper? I finished the picture!”

  “He was very pleased,” said Louise. “He was very funny [when he came around] the next day. We were all sitting around talking about finishing it, and he said, ‘I told Stanley if I died tomorrow he had the picture. He had enough.’ He didn’t think there would be any retakes. He said, ‘He’s got the whole thing.’ He said, ‘I didn’t think I would make it.’ He pulled out a wad of bills and he said, ‘There. I’ve gotten my first payment.’ He gave us all a nice fat bill. ‘There,’ he said. He was very tired.”

  And so he settled back into his cloistered existence in the cottage on St. Ives, still tossing and turning and struggling to sleep. “No bunk—no makeup—no over-interest in clothes—only a few rather pathetic personal treasures,” Kate would later write. “His Carrara marble Madonna made for him and given to him by the carvers at Carrara—a book signed, given to him by Bob Kennedy—a little silver orchestra given to him by Stanley Kramer—‘May your music play on and on’—an old tweed coat—a comfortable pair of shoes—an old hat given to him by Jack Ford—his chair—his car—his few dear friends. He was like a lion in a cage. You gave him meat, he ate the meat. You gave him water, he drank the water and then he walked up and down, up and down in the cage of life, looking out, and in those eyes you saw the jungle—the freedom—the fear—the affection—unblinking, unguarded.”