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26 “finest actor”: Mook, “Checking Up on Tracy.”
27 “I am Spencer Tracy”: Los Angeles Examiner, 3/5/33.
28 “ranch life”: Hall, “Why My Wife and I Are Together Again.”
29 “They fired me”: Hollywood Citizen News, 4/14/52.
30 “Old pact”: Variety, 11/13/34.
31 “successful in securing”: Leo Morrison to ST, 4/10/35 (SLT).
32 “no question in my mind”: Astrid Allwyn Fee to Selden West via telephone, 1/9/78 (SW).
33 “half loaded”: Charles Higham, Hollywood Cameramen (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970), p. 141.
34 “go off to Virginia”: Frank Tracy to Selden West.
35 “drunk and resisting”: Los Angeles Times, 3/12/35. See also Los Angeles Examiner, 3/12/35.
36 “so sadly lacking”: Hollywood Reporter, 3/25/35.
37 “should rest before”: Los Angeles Examiner, 4/1/35.
38 “wounding his vanity”: Allvine, The Greatest Fox of Them All, p. 153.
CHAPTER 11 THAT DOUBLE JACKPOT
1 “Without stars”: Irving G. Thalberg, undated draft memo to Nicholas Schenck (author’s collection).
2 “We recognize”: Memorandum of Agreement between Spencer Tracy and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 4/2/35, Turner Entertainment/SW.
3 “by mutual consent”: Cancellation Agreement between Spencer Tracy and Fox Film Corporation, 3/30/35 (SLT).
4 “very flattering offer”: Los Angeles Times, 4/3/35.
5 “most valuable stars”: Los Angeles Examiner, 3/12/44.
6 “pieces of property”: Tracy, The Story of John, p. 161.
7 “a million dollars”: Los Angeles Examiner, 5/16/35.
8 “first-rate yarn”: The Murder Man, synopsis by Edward Hogan, 3/21/35 (MGM).
9 binge-drinking insomniac: In the original dialogue continuity by Tim Whelan and Guy Bolton, Steve Gray is “morose and drinks too much” but is not a binge drinker. The scene introducing Gray on the merry-go-round after a disappearance of several days first appears in a dialogue continuity by John C. Higgins dated May 22, 1935 (AMPAS).
10 “quiet, compelling conviction”: Daily Variety, 7/6/35.
11 Loew’s Capitol: Figures for The Murder Man are from Variety, 8/7/35. According to the Mannix ledger, the film cost $167,000 and returned a profit of $78,000 on total billings of $397,000.
12 “criminal reporter”: Variety, 7/31/35.
13 “fairly exciting”: New York Telegraph, 7/28/35.
14 “greedily accepted”: Screen and Radio Weekly, 8/25/35.
15 final tally: According to the research library of Karl Thiede, domestic and foreign rentals for Dante’s Inferno totaled $786,200. With a negative cost of $748,900, the film posted a loss of $269,900.
16 “went to pieces”: Scott Eyman, Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), p. 149.
17 “sat around talking”: Tracy, “My Pal, Will Rogers.”
18 “my sense of humor”: Los Angeles Examiner, 8/19/35.
19 “sorry you were sick”: Judith Wood to Selden West, via telephone, 2/3/93 (SW).
20 “Tracy’s gassed”: David Stenn, Bombshell: The Life and Death of Jean Harlow (New York: Doubleday, 1993), p. 195.
21 “A press agent”: Teet Carle, “Magnificent Katharine Hepburn: A Study in Magnetism,” Hollywood Studio Magazine, August 1974.
22 “wiped me out”: Eddie Lawrence to Selden West, Los Angeles, 8/6/93 (SW).
23 “had me scared”: Charles Darnton, “Down With Romance!” Screenland, February 1937.
24 “contrasting me to Jean”: Myrna Loy (with James Kotsilibas-Davis), Being and Becoming (New York: Knopf, 1987), p. 122.
25 “very much surprised”: Tracy, “My Complicated Life,” Part 1.
26 “I think every woman”: Lyn Tornabene, Long Live the King (New York: Putnam, 1976), p. 193.
27 “I called him for it”: Patrick McGilligan, Film Crazy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), p. 247.
28 “Judy Garland”: It is perhaps the existence of these innocent photographs that prompted Bill Davidson to include an assertion in his 1988 book Tragic Idol that Tracy dated Garland “who then was only fifteen.” The information supposedly came from James Cagney and, significantly, was published only after Cagney’s death. Joe Mankiewicz, who was seriously involved with Garland in the forties, characterized the story as “absolute bullshit,” as did Garland’s third husband, Sid Luft. Dependably, Christopher Andersen repeated the story, adding details. According to Andersen, the relationship began in January 1937, when Garland was only fourteen: “Jimmy Cagney warned his friend the inevitable gossip could ruin his career. [But] Tracy continued to see Garland privately, and after their romance ended, they remained close …” In Andersen’s account, Cagney’s warning is of the career-ruining potential of the “inevitable gossip” rather than the effect an arrest for statutory rape could have had on Tracy’s future. There is, of course, no evidence whatsoever that Tracy and Garland were involved at any time in their lives.
29 “Who said that?”: Undated clipping (NYPL).
30 “He shouldn’t have said that”: Dottie Wellman to Selden West, via telephone, 7/12/95 (SW).
31 “a lot of fistfights”: McGilligan, Film Crazy, p. 247.
32 “a little misunderstanding”: Los Angeles Examiner, 12/4/35.
33 “We’ve been friends”: Los Angeles Times, 12/4/35.
34 “The beaut”: Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, 12/5/35.
35 “I told my idea”: Patrick McGilligan, ed., Backstory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 219.
36 “let you make this film”: Kenneth L. Geist, Pictures Will Talk (New York: Scribners, 1978), pp. 76–77.
37 “dictate it”: Gordon Gow, “Cocking a Snook,” Films and Filming, November 1970.
38 “they killed my dog”: Norman Krasna’s original story, as dictated from memory by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, is in the M-G-M collection at USC, along with story conference notes and draft screenplays by Leonard Praskins and Bartlett Cormack.
39 “talked to Fritz”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Selden West, Bedford, New York, 1/17/92 (SW).
40 “Sacco and Vanzetti”: Newquist, A Special Kind of Magic, p. 145.
41 “Tracy … is a lawyer”: Fritz Lang and Leonard Praskins, “Notes of Story Conference,” 8/31/35 (MGM).
42 “walking along the street”: Jeanette MacDonald, Oral History with Mr. and Mrs. Robert C. Franklin, Columbia University, June 1959.
43 six words: Gottfried Reinhardt, Oral History with Mr. and Mrs. Robert C. Franklin, Columbia University, 1959.
44 “soap opera”: Anita Loos, Kiss Hollywood Good-by (New York: Viking, 1974), p. 129.
45 “a little dubious”: Ardmore, “Tracy,” n.d.
46 “an unhappy man”: John McCabe to Katharine Hepburn, 3/14/86 (KHLA).
47 “I was seventeen”: Kanin, Tracy and Hepburn, p. 24.
48 “awful scared”: New York Sun, undated clipping (NYPL).
49 “I’m a Roman Catholic”: Sharpe, “The Adventurous Life of Spencer Tracy,” Part 3.
50 “didn’t think I ought”: “Spencer Tracy Learned a Lesson,” Picturegoer (UK), 12/11/37.
51 “Here we were”: Gable, “My Pal, Spencer Tracy.”
52 “less self-conscious”: Patrick McGilligan, Tender Comrades (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), p. 702.
53 “Lambs Club”: Gable, “My Pal, Spencer Tracy.”
54 “Gable is a mess!”: Edward Baron Turk, Hollywood Diva (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), p. 181.
55 “all the stories”: Joseph Newman to the author, via telephone, 11/25/03.
56 “I like Tracy”: Turk, Hollywood Diva, p. 181.
57 “first day’s work”: Sam Katz to Fritz Lang, 4/22/36 (AFI).
58 “peanut addict”: Gail Gardner witnessed this exchange and described it in her syndicated column of April 18, 1936.
59 �
�big ego”: Boston Globe, 7/7/74.
60 “Lang … would have”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to David Heeley and Joan Kramer, New York, 1985 (TH).
61 “He gained a lot”: Joseph Newman to the author.
62 “We were pretty serious”: Gable, “My Pal, Spencer Tracy.”
63 “Aces” Hatfield: Herman J. Mankiewicz’s partial screenplay, dated January 9, 1935, is in the Turner/M-G-M Scripts Collection (AMPAS). Anita Loos’ earliest draft of the screenplay, also incomplete, is dated April 23, 1935 (MGM).
64 “When Sylvia Sidney”: Tracy, “Making Faces at Life,” Part 4.
65 “Now figure Spence”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Selden West.
66 “I can’t stand this”: Joseph Ruttenberg, American Film Institute Oral History with Bill Gleason, 1972 (AFI).
67 “In shooting”: Joseph Ruttenberg, Southern Methodist University Oral History with Ronald L. Davis.
68 “The earthquake was flat”: Los Angeles Times, 6/3/77.
69 “hell on everybody”: Scott Eyman, “Joseph Ruttenberg,” Focus on Film, spring 1976.
70 “we worked like slaves”: New York Herald Tribune, 12/20/36.
71 “bad to much worse”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Heeley and Kramer (TH).
72 “solitary salted peanut”: The Fury screenplay, by Bartlett Cormack and Fritz Lang, including deleted scenes and the original ending, can be found in John Gassner and Dudley Nichols, eds., 20 Best Film Plays (New York: Crown, 1943), pp. 521–82.
73 “A man gives a speech”: Peter Bogdanovich, Fritz Lang in America (New York: Praeger, 1969), pp. 27–28.
74 “I agree”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Fritz Lang, 4/25/36 (AFI). It should be noted that almost everything Lang had to say with regard to the genesis and editing of Fury conflicts with the archival record. “I had found a four-page story by Norman Krasna—I wanted to do that” (The Real Tinsel, p. 342). The Production Code file notes that Mankiewicz verbally outlined the story to Iselin Auster and Geoffrey Sherlock on August 21, 1935, and furnished a written treatment the next day. In separate interviews both Krasna and Mankiewicz agreed that it was Mankiewicz, and not Lang, who remembered the story and committed it to paper when Krasna himself had forgotten it.
“Mr. Mankiewicz came late to the project. It was I who chose the subject and worked on the script … During the course of shooting he became the producer” (Focus on Film, spring 1975). Notes from the first story conference between Lang and Leonard Praskins are dated August 31, 1935. Notes first showing Mankiewicz’s participation are dated September 3, 1935. When a full script (titled The Mob) was sent to the PCA for review on January 24, 1936, the cover letter clearly identified Mankiewicz as the producer. Filming began on February 20, 1936.
75 “test under fire”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Heeley and Kramer.
76 “a first preview”: Geist, Pictures Will Talk, p. 80.
77 “all very well”: “Loew’s Inc.,” Fortune, August 1939.
78 “often been asked”: Bogdanovich, Fritz Lang in America, pp. 29–30.
79 “Peter Lorre”: Geist, Pictures Will Talk, p. 78. Lang also asserted that “because he drank like a fish” Tracy’s contract with Metro provided “that if he had so much as a glass of beer they could throw him out.” There was, of course, no such clause in Tracy’s M-G-M contract, dated April 8, 1936, other than standard language regarding public behavior (the so-called morals clause) and the artist’s inability to render services by reason of mental or physical incapacitation.
80 “I don’t think Spence”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Selden West.
81 “great document”: Spencer Tracy, 1936 datebook (SLT).
82 “Fritz Lang”: New York Herald Tribune, 12/20/36. Lang was born in Vienna, but made his early films in Germany.
CHAPTER 12 THE BEST YEAR
1 “The house”: S. R. Mook, “Spencer Tracy’s Home Life,” Screenland, March 1940.
2 “consummate exhibition”: Daily Variety, 5/19/36.
3 “It looked hopeless”: Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 5/28/36.
4 “most courageous”: New York World-Telegram, 6/6/36.
5 a “builder”: New York Enquirer, 6/14/36.
6 The picture ran up: Figures for Fury are from Variety, 6/10, 6/17, and 6/24/36; and the Mannix ledger.
7 The Plough and the Stars: Director John Ford later blamed Irving Thalberg’s death for the cancellation of Tracy’s loan-out to RKO, but Thalberg was still alive when the reversal was made public in July 1936. There is some reason to believe that Ford held Tracy personally responsible for welshing on the commitment, which would have teamed him with actress Barbara Stanwyck and a predominantly Irish cast that included Una O’Connor, Erin O’Brien Moore, Bonita Granville, Mary Gordon, and five members of the Abbey Players (imported from Dublin). Once again, actor Preston Foster was substituted for Tracy, and the resulting film was not only less than Ford had hoped, but subsequently butchered by the studio. It would be more than twenty years before Ford and Tracy would again work together on a picture.
8 “What the movies need”: Los Angeles Evening Herald-Express, 2/18/36.
9 “a truthful man”: Charles Bickford, Bulls, Balls, Bicycles & Actors (New York: Paul S. Erikson, 1965), p. 227.
10 “peered frantically”: Hollywood Citizen News, 6/25/36.
11 “most difficult role”: Variety, 7/1/36.
12 “another brilliant portrayal”: New York Times, 6/27/36.
13 “A year ago”: Ed Sullivan, “The Best Bet of the Year,” Silver Screen, September 1936.
14 “HAD WONDERFUL TRIP”: ST to Sol Wurtzel, 6/26/36 (AMPAS).
15 “You’ll never know”: Ed Sullivan, “A Prediction that Came Doubly True,” Silver Screen, April 1940.
16 “Walking on the set”: Hollywood Citizen News, 7/2/36.
17 “He moped”: Loy, Being and Becoming, p. 141.
18 “cashier’s office”: Darnton, “Down With Romance!”
19 “do his best”: Sheilah Graham, Confessions of a Hollywood Columnist (New York: Morrow, 1969), p. 37.
20 “ ‘beginning to gain weight’ ”: Kitty Callahan, “Spencer Tracy,” Family Circle, 6/5/42.
21 “an unrevealed script”: New York Times, 7/3/36.
22 “Fought against it”: Gladys Hall, “You Can’t Put Spencer Tracy into Words,” Motion Picture, November 1937.
23 “his first part”: Ida Zeitlin, “Manuel the Lovable,” Modern Screen, October 1937.
24 “every picture in town”: Hall, “You Can’t Put Spencer Tracy into Words.”
25 “So what?”: Harold Keene, “How Spencer Tracy’s Love Survived Its Greatest Test,” Movie Mirror, October 1937.
26 “Susie … was only four”: Tracy, The Story of John, p. 176.
27 my hair curled: Newquist, A Special Kind of Magic, p. 149.
28 “fall on your ass”: Bosley Crowther, notes, Eddie Mannix interview, May 1953, Bosley Crowther Collection, Brigham Young University.
29 the funeral: Michael Sragow, in his biography of Victor Fleming, incorrectly reports that Tracy fell off the wagon as a result of Thalberg’s death. By evidence of his own datebooks, Tracy was completely dry before and during the filming of Captains Courageous.
Bill Davidson, in Tragic Idol, asserts more generally that Tracy went on a bender during the picture, in part to put across a lurid scene at the opening of his book. Davidson quotes M-G-M publicist (and later producer) Walter Seltzer, who worked briefly under publicity chief Howard Strickling. According to Seltzer’s quote (as reported by Davidson), Tracy turned his rage on the furnishings in his sixth-floor suite at the Beverly Wilshire, heaving chairs against the walls and bringing his fists down on the surface of a small writing desk with such force that it was smashed in two. Lamps were shattered, mirrors broken, bottles flung at doors and windows. Management allegedly called Carroll, who was admitted to the locked room, then called Strickling’s office at M-G-M when the commotion went unabated. When the door to the suite was unlocked with a passkey, studio security
personnel accompanying Strickling and “half of the publicity department” supposedly witnessed the sight of Tracy wrestling his brother toward an open window with the obvious intent of adding him to the topography of Wilshire Boulevard.
When queried about the quote Davidson attributes to him, Seltzer responded: “That is inaccurate. I wasn’t there and never witnessed such a thing. It might possibly have happened, but that’s something Howard never would have talked about. I don’t know where Bill got that; I knew Bill and we talked often, but that particular quote was a complete fabrication.” Walter Seltzer to the author, via telephone, 4/16/08.
30 “practicing dialect”: “Spencer Tracy’s Learned a Lesson.”
31 “Tracy was sore”: Capt. J. M. Hersey, “The Log of the We’re Here,” Woman’s Home Companion, April 1937.
32 “full schedule”: Mickey Rooney, Life Is Too Short (New York: Villard Books, 1991), p. 94.
33 “purposely set out”: Victor Fleming, “Filming Captains Courageous—A Director’s Own Story,” Captains Courageous souvenir program, 1937.
34 “put on a clean shirt”: New York Times, 12/13/36.
35 “educated Portuguese”: Hall, “You Can’t Put Spencer Tracy into Words.”
36 “warm feelings”: Freddie Bartholomew in M-G-M: When the Lion Roars (Part Two—“The Lion Reigns Supreme”), Turner Pictures/Point Blank Productions, 1992.
37 “Slick as a whistle”: Spencer Tracy, “The Log of the We’re Here,” Picturegoer, 12/11/37.
38 “There is a drawbridge”: S. R. Mook, “For More Than Money,” Screenland, May 1938.
39 “Stubby Kruger”: Hersey, “The Log of the We’re Here.”
40 “Anything for release”: Yvonne Beaudry, “Tracy and Beaudry,” Silurian News, May 1992.
41 “idealistic role”: Chicago Daily News, 5/29/37.
42 “I think of you”: ST to Lincoln Cromwell, 1/12/37.
43 “As everyone knows”: Oakland Tribune, 1/31/37.
44 “well on my way”: Los Angeles Times, 5/16/37.
45 “I’m alive today”: Sharpe, “The Adventurous Life of Spencer Tracy,” Part 3.
46 thyroid: A goiter is typically the result of low iodine in the diet, a condition the body attempts to correct by stimulating the production of hormones in the thyroid gland. In the days before iodine was routinely added to table salt, goiters were common in inland areas where the soil was often deficient in iodine. In the United States, Milwaukee was considered part of the “goiter belt.”