48 “We assume”: Joseph I. Breen to Louis B. Mayer, 5/2/42 (AMPAS).
49 “A full conference”: Mosley, Evergreen: Victor Saville in His Own Words, pp. 156–57.
50 “another flier”: Matie E. Winston to Louise Tracy, 7/5/42 (SLT).
51 “Christine is guilty”: Joseph I. Breen to Louis B. Mayer, 7/7/42 (AMPAS).
52 change pages: The writing of Keeper of the Flame is documented in the M-G-M script files at USC and AMPAS.
53 “open set”: Emily Torchia to Selden West.
54 “hundreds of suggestions”: Gavin Lambert, On Cukor (New York: Putnam, 1972), p. 101.
55 “take one”: Darryl Hickman to the author, via telephone, 11/21/05.
56 “she finally carried”: Lambert, On Cukor, p. 172.
57 “What are you up to”: Theresa Helburn to Katharine Hepburn, 8/9/42 (TGC).
58 Appear on the set: As Darryl Hickman said, “He was clearly not a happy man. He would come in in the morning and he would be so shut down. It was so strange. Personally he was that way, but when the camera rolled, whatever was there would open up and he would use it.”
59 “He felt the miseries”: Katharine Hepburn to Phil Donahue, Donahue, Transcript #3358, 12/13/91.
60 “I MUST ADVISE YOU”: Theresa Helburn to Katharine Hepburn, 9/1/42 (TGC).
61 “I want to talk to you”: Katharine Hepburn to Theresa Helburn, Lawrence Langner, and Philip Barry, 9/7/42, Philip Barry Papers, Georgetown University. A preliminary draft of this letter, minus the “for personal reasons” appeal, is preserved in the Katharine Hepburn collection at New York Public Library.
62 “you are in pain”: Theresa Helburn, undated notes (TGC).
63 “A SHOCK”: Theresa Helburn to Katharine Hepburn, 9/13/42 (TGC).
64 “insomnia”: Johns Hopkins Hospital, History No. 260076, November 1942 (SW).
CHAPTER 19 NOT THE GUY THEY SEE UP THERE ON THE SCREEN
1 “have a project”: Ardmore, “Clinic,” 7/20/72 (JKA).
2 The meeting took place: Minutes of Mothers’ Meeting, 7/18/42 (JTC). See also Louise Tracy to Neil S. McCarthy, 7/20/43 (JTC).
3 “got my wits”: Ardmore, “Clinic.”
4 The first meeting of the Mothers: Minutes, 10/17/42 (JTC). The $5 check came from a doctor at L.A.’s Orthopedic Hospital. The $1,000 check likely came from Louise herself.
5 “rest cure”: Lowell Sun, 1/18/43.
6 “Miss Hepburn is Hepburn”: Variety, 12/16/42.
7 “garden-variety love story”: New York Times, 2/21/43.
8 “most important”: New York Times, 2/21/43.
9 “horrible scenes”: Katharine Hepburn to Donald Ogden Stewart, 12/15/42 (DOS).
10 “can’t vouch”: “Donald Ogden Stewart,” Focus on Film, November–December 1970.
11 “It was winter”: James Harvey, “Irene Dunne Remembers,” Film Comment, January– February 1980.
12 Tracy’s relationship: In 1971 Irene Dunne told Roddy McDowell that Tracy was difficult at the start of A Guy Named Joe “because he wanted Kate.” McDowell repeated what she said to Selden West in a phone conversation on 2/23/97 (SW). Given her prior commitments, it is unlikely that Hepburn could have done the film; she was appearing on Broadway in Without Love when Dunne’s casting was announced in December 1942.
13 “first few days”: James Bawden, “A Visit with Irene Dunne,” American Classic Screen, September–October 1977.
14 “too old”: Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, 3/13/43.
15 “As the star appeared”: New York Times, 8/6/67.
16 “refusal to rehearse”: Harvey, “Irene Dunne Remembers.”
17 “always boss”: Los Angeles Times, 3/16/73.
18 “enjoyed working”: Ibid. Dunne told David Chierichetti she thought A Guy Named Joe was “one of the finest pictures I ever made.”
19 “walking trip”: Eddie Lawrence to Selden West.
20 “We’re alike”: “A Director Named Fleming,” The Lion’s Roar, January 1944.
21 “the first take”: Van Johnson in Spencer Tracy: Triumph and Turmoil, Peter Jones Productions/A&E Network, 1999.
22 “liked young actors”: Barry Nelson, Southern Methodist University Oral History with Ronald L. Davis.
23 “My face”: Pete Martin, “Bobby-Sox Blitzer,” Saturday Evening Post, 6/30/45.
24 “Hollywood Presbyterian”: Van Johnson, undated interview clip for Turner Classic Movies.
25 “I can remember Mr. Tracy”: Doris Chambers to Jane Ardmore, 7/10/72 (JKA).
26 “a great mistake”: Ardmore, “Clinic.”
27 “dirty floors”: Ogden Standard-Examiner, 4/7/43.
28 “She would put my hand”: Carol Lee Barnes to the author, via e-mail, 6/16/05.
29 “give all this money”: Ardmore, “Clinic.”
30 “off the sauce”: Doug Warren (with James Cagney), James Cagney: The Authorized Biography (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), p. 132.
31 “never announced”: Frank McHugh to Ralph Bellamy.
32 “All the wives”: Dorothy McHugh to Selden West.
33 “lived the characters”: David Chierichetti, “Irene Dunne Today,” Film Fan Monthly, February 1971.
34 “art of reacting”: Barry Nelson Oral History.
35 “seldom lost myself”: Ardmore, “Tracy,” n.d.
36 “I’m no good”: Adela Rogers St. Johns, “Man of Conflict,” Photoplay, February 1945.
37 “Here’s Kenny”: Edgers, “The Spencer Tracy We Knew.”
38 “no saying no”: Cromwell, Dear Spence, p. 298.
39 “ ‘What do you expect’ ”: Katharine Hepburn to Phil Donahue.
40 “All of my men”: William Self to Selden West, Beverly Hills, 8/3/93 (SW).
41 “destroyed Spencer”: Katharine Hepburn to Selden West, Fenwick, 10/18/91 (SW).
42 “dessert with rum”: David Caldwell to the author.
43 “intimate relationship”: Norman, The Hollywood Greats, p. 83.
44 “We spent the night”: Cromwell, Dear Spence, p. 301.
45 “never met him”: Hal Elias, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Oral History (AMPAS).
46 “hovering ghosts”: Edward L. Munson, Jr., as quoted in American Film Institute Catalog: Feature Films 1941–1950, Film Entries A–L, p. 967.
47 “lighting took hours”: Hume Cronyn, A Terrible Liar (New York: William Morris, 1991), p. 168.
48 “Freund was anything”: Fred Zinnemann, An Autobiography (New York: Scribner, 1992), p. 52.
49 “Zinnemann was first chosen”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Kramer.
50 “very important”: Gabriel Miller, ed., Fred Zinnemann Interviews (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005), p. 58.
51 “feeling morose”: Cronyn, A Terrible Liar, pp. 169–70.
52 “he’d had a few”: Katharine Hepburn to Phil Donahue.
53 “done two things”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Selden West.
54 “I have no idea”: Hepburn, Me, p. 396.
55 “fiercely jealous”: Katharine Houghton’s memory of what stylist Helen Hunt told her during the making of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is from a conversation with the author, New York City, 5/4/06.
56 “afraid of emotion”: Norman, The Hollywood Greats, p. 89.
57 “lower his libido”: Eugene Kennedy to the author, via e-mail, 6/29/07.
58 The original Sheilah Graham story, a discussion of the stars on the top-ten list of the Motion Picture Herald, ran in January 1943. “Spencer Tracy has already been mentioned as Number 10,” Graham wrote. “He used to be higher on the list. Spencer is losing out because he is losing interest in his film career, putting private affairs in top place.” The following month, Tracy berated Graham on the set of A Guy Named Joe for writing about his personal life. “No one is interested in that,” he said. “There’s so much else going on in life, who cares what I do on my own time? And even if they did, it’s none of your business … Mind you, I’m n
ot saying yes and I’m not saying no in regard to some of the things you implied. That’s beside the point, which is that you shouldn’t have mentioned my private life at all.” Graham was so unnerved by the exchange that she devoted her entire column of February 24 to it.
59 “M-G-M grapevine”: Zinnemann, An Autobiography, pp. 50–51.
60 “easiest thing”: Signe Hasso to James Fisher, 7/29/93 (SW).
61 “happy all the time”: New York Morning Telegraph, 1/21/44.
62 “virtually explode”: Spokane Spokesman-Review, 5/7/44.
63 “there can be debates”: Hollywood Reporter, 12/24/43.
64 “foolish”: New York Times, 12/24/43.
65 total billings: According to the Mannix ledger, A Guy Named Joe cost $2,627,000 and returned a profit of $1,066,000.
66 “eleven straight months”: Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, 1/10/44.
67 “certain number of weeks”: F. L. Hendrickson, internal memo, 2/5/44 (Turner Entertainment/SW).
68 “Anybody could go on”: Ardmore, “Tracy.”
69 “smart boy”: Los Angeles Examiner, 11/20/43.
CHAPTER 20 THE BIG DRUNK
1 “bronzed from his first”: Milwaukee Sentinel, 5/19/44.
2 “I did”: Sister Ann Willits, OP, to the author, via e-mail, 8/11/05.
3 New York: M-G-M records show that Tracy returned to the studio at some point during his vacation period to do one additional day of retakes on Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo, but exactly when this occurred is unknown.
4 “closest three people”: Bertha Calhoun to the author.
5 “having to meet Spencer”: Fay Kanin to the author, Santa Monica, 1/9/07.
6 “member of the family”: Nancy Reagan, My Turn (New York: Random House, 1989), p. 78.
7 “she had a friend”: Katie Treat to Conrad Oakerwohl, 7/1/85, SobrietyTalks.com. Mrs. Treat remembered that Nancy Davis was in her early twenties at the time. Born Anne Frances Robbins on July 6, 1921, Davis (the future Mrs. Reagan) would have been twenty-two years old in May 1944.
8 “certain people”: Katharine Hepburn to Selden West (SW).
9 “very private floor”: Bob Colacello, Ronnie and Nancy (New York: Warner Books, 2004), p. 182.
10 “artistic success”: Baltimore Sun, 5/21/44.
11 “two weeks”: Port Arthur News, 8/19/44.
12 “I recall the liquor”: Dan Alexander to Katharine Hepburn, 9/29/91 (SW).
13 “song and dance”: Los Angeles Examiner, 10/19/44.
14 “he believed”: St. Johns, “Man of Conflict.”
15 “All the film companies”: Time, 6/14/43.
16 “submerging herself”: Dr. Robert Hepburn in Katharine Hepburn: On Her Own Terms, CBS News Productions/A&E Network, 1995.
17 “begin shooting next week”: Katharine Hepburn to Theresa Helburn, n.d. (TGC).
18 “As always”: Higham, Kate, p. 126.
19 “we stopped”: Patricia Morison to the author, via telephone, 7/17/04.
20 “I lay on the floor”: Katharine Hepburn to Phil Donahue.
21 “finish the picture”: Katharine Hepburn to Ellen Barry, n.d., Philip Barry Papers, Georgetown University.
22 “practical man”: Katharine Hepburn to Selden West.
23 “didn’t publicize him”: June Dunham to the author, via telephone, 3/30/05.
24 “What goes on”: Chicago Daily News, 12/4/44.
25 “I don’t frighten”: Katharine Hepburn to Selden West.
26 “fiendish night”: A. Scott Berg, Kate Remembered (New York: Putnam, 2003), p. 212.
27 “expressed surprise”: Martin Gottfried to Selden West, 5/25/99 (SW).
28 “beaten hell”: Millard Kaufman to the author, Brentwood, 10/14/03.
29 “once told me”: Katharine Houghton to the author, via e-mail, 7/28/08.
30 “he’d ever hurt anyone”: Katharine Hepburn to Selden West.
31 “February 1”: According to studio records, when Bucquet needed a shot of Pat entering Jamie’s home in Washington, D.C., it was Carroll who doubled for his brother. The shot was made on February 7, 1945; Tracy was already in New York.
32 “delightful and amusing”: Playwrights’ Company, unpublished write-up for Elliott Norton, Boston Post, n.d., Playwrights’ Company Collection, Wisconsin State Historical Society, Madison.
33 “first place”: Katharine Hepburn to Selden West.
34 “new characterization”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Selden West.
35 tried to choke her: Katharine Hepburn to Selden West.
36 “Some sort of fight”: Katharine Houghton in an e-mail to the author, 12/4/09.
37 “got so loaded”: Dr. Robert Hepburn to the author, via telephone, 4/11/05.
38 “write another play”: Playwrights’ Company, write-up for Elliot Norton.
39 “I’ve got to go back”: Earl Wilson, Hot Times (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1984), p. 41.
40 “called upon”: ST to Robert Emmet Sherwood, 4/13/45, Robert Emmet Sherwood Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
41 “off the screen”: Los Angeles Examiner, 4/17/45.
42 Tracy objecting: Details of Leo Morrison’s talks with the studio are from F. L. Hendrickson, internal memos, 4/18/45 and 4/28/45, Turner Entertainment/SW.
43 “I couldn’t understand”: Kanin, Tracy and Hepburn, p. 64.
44 “Sherry-Netherland”: Dietz, Dancing in the Dark, pp. 280–81.
45 Agent Harold Rose’s: Suzanne Antles to the author.
CHAPTER 21 THE RUGGED PATH
1 cold-turkey detox: Details of Tracy’s stay are from Doctors Hospital Admission Record No. 61253, May 1945, Beth Israel Hospital/SW. In a telephone interview with Selden West on 2/7/96, actor Don Taylor repudiated Bill Davidson’s embroidered account of Taylor’s having seen Tracy at Doctors Hospital, calling it “melodramatic horse manure.” Taylor heard that Tracy had been admitted in restraints but emphasized that he never personally witnessed such a scene.
2 “finding his way”: Arthur Hopkins to Katharine Hepburn, 6/12/45 (KHNY).
3 “My best bet”: Travis Bogard and Jackson R. Bryer, eds., Selected Letters of Eugene O’Neill (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 548.
4 “ten times”: Lawrence Langner to Katharine Hepburn, 3/20/44 (TGC).
5 “things to say”: Eugene Kinkead, “The Rugged Path,” New Yorker, 11/24/45.
6 “making a mistake”: Kanin, Tracy and Hepburn, p. 96.
7 “going to work”: Jane Feely Desmond to Selden West.
8 escape clause: Out of town Tracy could leave the play for any reason with a two-week notice. In New York he would be able to give notice if the gross dipped below $16,000 for any three consecutive weeks.
9 “foolish question”: New York Times, 2/21/43.
10 “One of the banes”: Garson Kanin to David Heeley and Joan Kramer, New York, 1985 (TH).
11 a 25 percent stake: Rubin may have suggested the cut Tracy was taking in his weekly income more than justified an equity stake in the production. At capacity, Tracy’s 15 percent of the gross would have brought him roughly $3,900 a week, about $1,400 less per week than he would have made under the terms of his M-G-M contract. Later, when business slipped, he would have been earning closer to $3,000 a week, which put him on a par with Elliott Nugent, who was getting about the same for his turn in Voice of the Turtle. Frank Fay, by comparison, was making $2,500 to $3,000 a week in Harvey, a terrific hit, while Walter Abel was reportedly collecting $2,000 a week in The Mermaids Singing, a flop.
12 “quite friendly”: Victor Samrock to Robert E. Sherwood, 9/17/45 (PC).
13 “imaginative, resourceful”: Kanin, Tracy and Hepburn, p. 96.
14 “look ridiculous”: Garson Kanin, Together Again! (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981), p. 89.
15 “sold out”: ST to Pete Martin.
16 “not calculated”: John F. Wharton, Life Among the Playwrights (New York: Quadrangle/New York Times, 1974), p. 137.
17 �
�Spencer was superb”: S. N. Behrman, People in a Diary: A Memoir (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), pp. 226–27.
18 “something was amiss”: Wharton, Life Among the Playwrights, p. 137.
19 “iron this out”: Los Angeles Daily News, 2/16/46.
20 “never nervous”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Kramer.
21 “delivers the goods”: Katharine Hepburn to Emil Levigne, n.d. (courtesy of Judy Samelson).
22 “party going on”: Irene Mayer Selznick, A Private View (New York: Knopf, 1983), p. 278.
23 “didn’t amount”: Ardmore, “Tracy,” n.d.
24 “ten days”: Kanin, Tracy and Hepburn, p. 97.
25 “basket case”: ST to Pete Martin.
26 “She and Spencer”: Katharine Hepburn to Charles Higham, circa 1975 (Charles Higham Collection, USC).
27 “It touched him”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Kramer.
28 “Spencer rose”: Kanin, Tracy and Hepburn, p. 98.
29 “No newspaper man”: New York Times, 11/12/45.
30 “mistaken a stage”: The New York dailies all ran their reviews of The Rugged Path on 11/12/45. The Time notice appeared in its issue of 11/19/45.
31 Andrew Tracy: Frank Tracy to Selden West, 10/18/95 (SW).
32 “same goddamn lines”: Edward Dmytryk, Southern Methodist University Oral History with Ronald L. Davis, 12/2/79.
33 “worst blows”: Robert E. Sherwood to Victor Samrock, 1/11/46 (PC).
34 Poverty: Sherwood put $18,000 into The Rugged Path, a 25 percent stake in the production. In a statement to him dated April 30, 1946, the play showed losses and expenses of $87,476.66 and an operating profit on Broadway of $18,671.01. Sherwood’s share of the loss amounted to $17,201.41; for his investment he received a refund of $798.59. See also Ed Sullivan’s column of 11/25/55.
35 “legitimate gross”: Robert E. Sherwood to ST, 12/12/45 (PC).
36 “your problems”: Robert E. Sherwood to ST, 12/18/45 (PC).
37 top five stars: Bing Crosby headed the list again, as he had in 1944. Van Johnson appeared in second place, Greer Garson in third, and Betty Grable in fourth.
38 “the great man tonight”: Victor Samrock to Robert E. Sherwood, 1/2/46 (PC).
39 “My record is good”: Variety, 1/9/46.
40 “increase business”: Victor Samrock to Robert E. Sherwood, 1/9/46 (PC).
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