James Curtis
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5 “did one rehearsal”: Laraine Day to Barbara Hall.
6 “was an alcoholic”: Lawrence Weingarten, American Film Institute Seminar with James Powers, 1/23/74 (AFI).
7 Tracy was “onto him”: Bosley Crowther, notes, Spencer Tracy interview, 5/10/53, Bosley Crowther Collection, Brigham Young University.
8 “a very prayerful guy”: Adela Rogers St. Johns to Ralph Story, Spencer Tracy: An Unauthorized Biography.
9 a “quickie” questionnaire: Hall, “You Can Only Defeat Yourself.”
10 “a bet I had”: Dallas Morning News, 1/25/40.
11 “the kind of stuff”: Daily Variety, 2/8/40.
12 humiliation: While Tracy’s personal reviews were good, I Take This Woman was variously described in the press as “lame and inept,” a “pretty sorry affair,” and an “amazing blend of tedium and trash.” Stubbornly, the studio booked it into Radio City Music Hall—a real shocker for the industry, given the picture’s almost legendary status—and the results were predictably disastrous. It did well enough in playoffs, however, to hold the overall loss to $325,000 on a final cost of nearly $1.3 million.
13 “They spent half their time”: Adela Rogers St. Johns to Ralph Story, “Spencer Tracy.”
14 “THIS YEAR’S GREATEST”: Gable, “My Pal, Spencer Tracy.”
15 “thought I was crazy when”: Callahan, “Spencer Tracy.”
16 “Can you imagine that?”: Harry Evans, “Hollywood Diary,” Family Circle, 8/23/40.
17 “One evening”: Stewart Granger, Sparks Fly Upward (New York: Putnam, 1981), pp. 348–49.
18 “ideas of experience”: John Erskine, “The Private Mind of Spencer Tracy,” Liberty, 8/24/40.
19 “What’ll you have”: Milwaukee Journal, 6/10/40.
20 “Today marks”: The Ripon Alumnus, June 1940.
21 “Roosevelt”: Louise, a Republican, supported Willkie in the election.
22 “Another picture”: Washington D.C. News, 9/13/40.
23 “you got a rotten deal”: Gene Buck to Rev. E. J. Flanagan, 8/23/39 (BT).
24 “step out”: Boys Town Times, 2/23/40.
25 “stuffy”: Ardmore, “Tracy,” n.d.
26 “You would not be good”: Frank McHugh to Ralph Bellamy.
27 “never forget”: Adela Rogers St. Johns to Ralph Story, “Spencer Tracy.”
28 “always been fascinated”: Katharine Hepburn, Me (New York: Knopf, 1991), p. 274.
29 “Barrymore”: Richard Mansfield, who predated Tracy’s theatergoing years, was also reputed to have accomplished the transformation sans makeup.
30 “the change”: Unidentified clipping, January 1941 (SW).
31 “tests without makeup”: J. D. Marshall, Blueprint on Babylon (Tempe, Ariz.: Phoenix House, 1978), p. 31.
32 “Ingrid came to Fleming”: Roy Mosley, Evergreen: Victor Saville in His Own Words (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), p. 146.
33 Men of Boys Town: A mechanical affair, the Boys Town sequel lacked the sincerity and emotional heart of the original. (Bobs Watson to director Norman Taurog: “Do you want halfway down tears or all the way down tears?”) Father Flanagan went through the same promotional motions as for Boys Town, coming to California for another “tribute” luncheon, this one broadcast live over NBC, but privately he thought the film fell “far below” the standard of the original. When the picture opened sluggishly, Louise wrote Spence from New York: “Got quite a few of the papers with the Boys Town notices. Considine should go out and stay drunk after those.”
34 “Which one”: This famous anecdote has been repeated dozens of times, usually portraying Maugham as having watched a scene of Tracy as Mr. Hyde. Its earliest telling, however, is in “Hollywood’s New Bogey Man” (Hollywood, July 1941), in which writer Tom De Vane places himself on the set of the dinner scene after four days of shooting. Tracy tells the story on himself, pinpointing it as having occurred the previous day. Garson Kanin later quotes him as telling it, considerably embellished, in Remembering Mr. Maugham, pp. 121–23.
35 “The Hyde part”: Chicago Tribune, 2/22/41.
36 “Ingrid … came to my office”: Mosley, Evergreen: Victor Saville in His Own Words, p. 146.
37 first dined together: Tracy’s relationship with Ingrid Bergman is documented in his 1941 datebook (SLT).
38 “I watched her relationship”: Laurence Leamer, As Time Goes By (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), p. 72.
39 “six sets of teeth”: Mosley, Evergreen: Victor Saville in His Own Words, p. 146.
40 “emotionally upset”: Silver Screen, August 1941.
41 “that of star”: Contract between Loew’s Incorporated and ST, 4/15/41, Turner Entertainment/SW.
42 “tests of clothes”: Sidney Franklin to Chester Franklin, 3/28/41, as quoted in Sidney Franklin’s unpublished memoir, We Laughed and We Cried, p. 365 (courtesy of Kevin Brownlow).
43 “I remember Victor Fleming”: Eugene Eckman to the author, via telephone, 7/28/04.
44 “what a pleasure”: Eddie Lawrence to Selden West.
45 “violently pro-Nazi”: Anne Revere to Selden West, circa 1978 (SW).
46 “hardest-working man”: New York World-Telegram, 5/17/41.
47 “on the set”: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings to Beatrice H. McNeill, 6/24/41, as quoted in Gordon E. Bigelow and Laura V. Monti, eds., The Selected Letters of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1983), pp. 204–05.
48 “How can I”: Louis D. Lighton to Elia Kazan, as quoted in Elia Kazan, Kazan: A Life (New York: Knopf, 1988), p. 311.
49 “we dissolved”: Joseph Ruttenberg, American Film Institute Oral History.
50 “master screen work”: Hollywood Reporter, 7/22/41.
51 “They laugh”: P.M., 8/13/41.
52 Abbott and Costello: New York Mirror, 8/13/41. “I remember Spencer talking about those bad reviews,” actress-playwright Katharine Houghton wrote in an e-mail. “They still rankled so many years later primarily because he hadn’t wanted to wear the makeup and did so against his better judgment. He was mad mostly at himself for caving in.”
53 “BIGGEST BUSINESS”: Nicholas Schenck to ST, 8/13/41 (SLT).
54 “It wasn’t the awards”: Mook, “Checking Up on Tracy.”
CHAPTER 17 WOMAN OF THE YEAR
1 “have trouble finding”: Mook, “Spencer Tracy’s Home Life.”
2 “I could see a change”: Charles R. Sligh, Jr., to Selden West.
3 “the name Feely”: Jane Feely Desmond to Selden West.
4 “two or three months”: Frank Tracy to Selden West.
5 Peggy Gough: The studio’s fan mail department took care of mail for stars and contract players who didn’t have secretaries of their own (or whose secretaries didn’t handle fan mail). Generally speaking, fan letters weren’t answered. Those requesting photos got a postcard listing the price of a picture (which, according to Peggy Gough, annoyed a good many people). Besides Tracy, the stars at M-G-M who had secretaries of their own to deal with fan mail were Robert Taylor, Robert Montgomery, Nelson Eddy, Jeanette MacDonald, Joan Crawford, and the Marx Brothers. See also: “Calling All Secretaries,” Modern Screen, June 1940.
6 “very charitable”: Peggy Gough to Mrs. Frances Rasinen, 11/11/40 (courtesy of Patricia Mahon).
7 “ ‘doing anything else’ ”: Frank Tracy to Selden West. In the book Tragic Idol, author Bill Davidson quotes Carroll Tracy as supposedly saying that one of John Tracy’s “greatest hopes” was that one of his sons would become a priest. Both Jane Feely Desmond and Frank Tracy doubted the quote was genuine. “I can’t imagine Carroll emoting that much about anything. Really,” Frank told Selden West in 1991.
8 “impression of Spence”: David Caldwell to the author.
9 “clash in print”: Garson Kanin, Tracy and Hepburn (New York: Viking, 1972), p. 80.
10 “Gar … had decided”: Ring Lardner, Jr., I’d Hate Myself in the Morning (Emeryville, Calif.: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2000)
, p. 91.
11 “Garson … probably sent it”: Patrick McGilligan, ed., Backstory 3 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 203.
12 “They made a mistake”: Dallas Morning News, 10/6/41.
13 “a very good time”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to George Stevens, Jr., 11/3/82, George Stevens: A Filmmaker’s Journey Collection, AMPAS.
14 “I was terrified”: Lupton A. Wilkinson and J. Bryan III, “The Hepburn Story” (Part 1), Saturday Evening Post, 11/29/41.
15 “We would have been lucky”: Jim Murray, “Kate, the Untamed Shrew,” draft Time cover story and interview transcripts, 1952, Time Magazine Morgue/SW. Although both Ring Lardner and Michael Kanin confirmed the $100,000 sale to Metro, the August 1, 1941 agreement transferring ownership of the property to Loew’s Incorporated specified a payment of $40,000 for the rights to the story. The $100,000 figure was to include all work on the screenplay as well as the story rights. Garson Kanin later described working on the script with his brother, Lardner, and Hepburn in a suite at the Garden of Allah. Kanin was in uniform, on a short leave. Food and drink, he recalled, were sent over from Chasen’s.
16 “George Cukor”: Katharine Hepburn to George Stevens, Jr., 11/3/82, George Stevens: A Filmmaker’s Journey Collection (AMPAS).
17 “Kate called on me”: George Stevens to Charles Higham, circa 1974, Charles Higham Collection, USC.
18 “Gable was more likely”: Doug McGrath, “Ring Lardner, Jr./Maurice Rapf,” On Writing, August 1997.
19 “brilliant actor”: Katharine Hepburn to David Heeley and Joan Kramer, New York, 9/5/85 (TH).
20 “I don’t think Spencer”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Kramer.
21 lesbian: Hepburn, Me, p. 400.
22 “masculine drive”: Murray, “Kate, the Untamed Shrew.”
23 “She stopped”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Heeley and Kramer, New York, 1985 (TH).
24 “Spencer was five-eleven”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Kramer. Although Hepburn claimed to be taller, her 1927 passport, issued when she was twenty years of age, gave her height as five feet six inches, and her niece, Katharine Houghton, believes this to be correct.
25 “dumb enough”: Ibid.
26 “think of anything to say”: Katharine Hepburn in The Spencer Tracy Legacy, WNET/MGM/UA Entertainment, 1986.
27 “eyeing her”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Heeley and Kramer.
28 “I was awful”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Kramer.
29 “There they were”: “The Hepburn Story,” Time, 9/1/52.
30 “too sweet”: New York Times, 2/21/43.
31 “crossing your legs”: Harry Evans, “Hollywood Diary,” Family Circle, 6/26/42.
32 “Acting to me”: Gregory J. M. Catsgs, “Sylvia Sidney,” Filmfax, November 1990.
33 “We never rehearsed”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Kramer.
34 “Very interesting”: Hepburn, Me, p. 274.
35 “ears stuck out”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Kramer.
36 “very unlikely thing”: McGrath, “Ring Lardner, Jr./Maurice Rapf.”
37 “wastes no time”: Los Angeles Times, 9/13/41.
38 “he was so steady”: A. Scott Berg, Kate Remembered, p. 194.
39 “new friendly feud”: New York Daily News, 9/13/41.
40 “I knew Spence”: George Stevens to Charles Higham.
41 “Mike Kanin”: Lardner, I’d Hate Myself in the Morning, p. 95.
42 “a complete account”: Tracy, The Story of John, p. 117.
43 discuss “future roles”: Leamer, As Time Goes By, p. 73.
44 Tracy’s “business”: George Stevens, unpublished interview with Pete Martin, December 1960 (USC).
45 “a lot of confusion”: Katharine Hepburn to George Stevens, Jr.
46 “the definitive play”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Heeley and Kramer.
47 “too feminist”: McGilligan, Backstory 3, p. 204.
48 “Mayer was away”: Ibid., p. 249.
49 “meaty hunk of business”: Evans, “Hollywood Diary.”
50 “the kind of looks”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to George Stevens, Jr.
51 “great unity”: John Steinbeck to ST, 1/9/40 (SLT).
52 “peculiar and strong affection”: John Steinbeck to ST, 1/9/40 (SLT).
53 “a great heart”: Elaine Steinbeck and Robert Wallsten, eds., Steinbeck: A Life in Letters (New York, Viking Press, 1975), p. 216.
54 “a little afraid”: Ibid., p. 224.
55 “don’t want money”: Ibid., p. 225.
56 “charming bosses”: John Steinbeck to ST, 6/12/41 (SLT).
57 screen rights: Paramount purchased the rights to Tortilla Flat at the behest of writer-producer Benjamin “Barney” Glazer, but the project went nowhere after George Raft declined the role of Danny. Glazer subsequently acquired the rights from Paramount when he moved to Warner Bros. in 1938. Paul Muni, who expressed a keen interest in doing the film, asked Steinbeck to write the screenplay, an offer which met with much the same answer that Metro received a few years later. Glazer sold the rights to M-G-M for $65,000 in April 1940.
58 “butched it up”: New York Times, 11/30/41.
59 “a lot more fun”: Marshall, Blueprint on Babylon, p. 32.
60 “kind of truth”: Erskine, “The Private Mind of Spencer Tracy.”
CHAPTER 18 I’VE FOUND THE WOMAN I WANT
1 Katharine Houghton Hepburn: For details on the history of the Hepburn family that differ from other published sources, I am grateful to Katharine Houghton.
2 “I’ve never discovered”: Katharine Houghton to the author, via e-mail, 11/3/06.
3 “Leland and Howard”: Myrna Blyth, “Kate Talks Straight,” Ladies’ Home Journal, October, 1991.
4 “The best”: Brooke Hayward, Haywire (New York: Knopf, 1977), p. 317.
5 “Why in the world”: Hepburn, Me, pp. 89–90.
6 “liked bad eggs”: Ralph G. Martin, “Kate Hepburn: My Life and Loves,” Ladies’ Home Journal, August 1975.
7 “our first picture”: Hepburn, Me, p. 395.
8 “off their feet”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Selden West.
9 “outdo me”: Emily Torchia to Selden West, via telephone, 8/2/93.
10 “line of conquests”: Claire Trevor to Selden West (SW).
11 “something you didn’t print”: Sheilah Graham Oral History, Columbia University.
12 “a great artist”: Tim Durant to Katharine Hepburn, 1967 (KHLA).
13 the Tracy-Hepburn affair: Norman Lloyd to the author, Studio City, 9/4/06.
14 “imagined I was a lesbian”: Hepburn, Me, p. 400.
15 “the only two men”: Katharine Houghton to the author, via e-mail, 5/7/08.
16 like Louise: It’s interesting to note that both women played The Man Who Came Back in stock—Louise in 1923, Hepburn in 1930.
17 “appearing at gunpoint”: Ingrid Bergman (with Alan Burgess), Ingrid Bergman, My Story (New York: Delacorte Press, 1980), p. 108.
18 “never have a year”: Rooney, Life Is Too Short, p. 188.
19 “he isn’t on the radio”: Peggy Gough to Mrs. Frances Rasinen, 12/1/41 (courtesy of Patricia Mahon).
20 “We of America”: Los Angeles Examiner, 1/12/42.
21 “suited to each other”: Spencer Tracy (as told to James Reid), “My Pal, Clark Gable,” Screen Life, May 1940.
22 “a very big star”: Adela Rogers St. Johns, Love, Laughter and Tears (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978), p. 329.
23 Mt. Potosi: Locals knew the mountain as Double Up Peak, after the Double Up Mine on its eastern face. In news accounts of the time, the crash scene was erroneously identified as “Double or Nothing” or Table Mountain. One later account mysteriously placed the crash at Mt. Olcott.
24 “pretty upset”: Peggy Gough to Mrs. Frances Rasinen, 3/23/42 (courtesy of Patricia Mahon).
25 “Clark, beyond consolation”: Loy, Being and Becoming, p. 169.
26 “People were clustered”: Harriett Gu
stason, “Looking Back,” Freeport Journal-Standard, 6/23/84.
27 “just as common”: Ibid.
28 capacity business: Figures for Woman of the Year are from Variety, 2/11 and 2/18/42; and the Mannix ledger.
29 “new Music Hall offering”: New York World-Telegram, 2/6/42.
30 “tossing his old hat”: New York Times, 2/6/42.
31 “The boy had told me”: Matie E. Winston to Louise Tracy, circa June 1967 (SLT).
32 “He can’t see your lips!”: Ardmore, “John,” n.d.
33 “mistaken idea”: Howard Dietz, Dancing in the Dark (New York: Quadrangle, 1974), p. 280.
34 “Benny Thau called”: Loy, Being and Becoming, p. 154.
35 Bonaventure: Milwaukee County Certificate of Birth No. 3714, corrected 8/24/42 “by order of State Board of Health.”
36 “They were exhausted”: Eddie Lawrence to Selden West.
37 “no condition”: F. L. Hendrickson, internal memo, 3/12/42, Turner Entertainment/SW.
38 “I’d been picked up”: Granger, Sparks Fly Upward, p. 283.
39 “Kate … was miserable”: Charles Higham, Kate (New York: Norton, 1975), p. 117.
40 “just stopped off”: Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, 5/12/42.
41 “Mr. Tracy said he”: Pittsburgh Press, 5/12/42.
42 “His symptoms”: Johns Hopkins Hospital, History No. 260076, May 1942 (SW).
43 The property: The New York Times reported that M-G-M acquired the rights to the story from RKO for $50,000, but the studio script files at USC show the book was submitted for consideration by the Frank W. Vincent Agency.
44 Hepburn committed: As late as April 10, Hepburn was expected to appear in Frenchman’s Creek at Paramount. The first mention of her doing Keeper of the Flame appeared in Edwin Schallert’s column of April 18. Her twelve-page contract for the picture, calling for a fee of $100,000, was dated July 18, 1942.
45 “I’m most anxious”: Cleveland Plain Dealer, 5/5/42.
46 “She is a woman”: Dorothy Manners, “La Hepburn Chooses to Ignore Stage-or-Screen Enigma,” n.d.
47 “impotent eunuch”: Donald Ogden Stewart to Ella Winter, as quoted in Patrick McGilligan, George Cukor: A Double Life (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), p. 168.