41 “notable achievements”: Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., My Dinner of Herbs (New York: Limelight Editions, 2003), p. 59.
42 “full impact”: Victor Samrock to Robert E. Sherwood, 1/21/46 (PC).
43 “I appreciate it”: Robert E. Sherwood to Victor Samrock and William Fields, 1/24/46 (PC).
CHAPTER 22 STATE OF THE UNION
1 “very happy”: Interview with Ardmore, 7/5/72.
2 “I got tired”: John Tracy, “My Complicated Life” (Part Two), Volta Review, July 1946.
3 “the BEST story”: R. B. Wills, “The Sea of Grass” coverage, 9/18/36 (MGM).
4 “Its Western setting”: Loy, Being and Becoming, p. 192.
5 “worked with Hepburn”: McGilligan, Tender Comrades, p. 578.
6 “fascinating and unusual”: New York Times, 4/21/46.
7 “bad at negotiating”: Robert M.W. Vogel Oral History (AMPAS).
8 “pretty good businessman”: Hall, “Spencer Tracy Faces Forty.”
9 “just a chance”: Zeitlin, “Manuel the Lovable.”
10 “every charitable organization”: Dorothy Gopadze, “Pardon My Pink Slip,” unpublished manuscript, n.d. (courtesy of Tina Gopadze Smith).
11 “very handsome”: Middletown (N.Y.) Times Herald, 2/21/47.
12 “not lost weight”: Elia Kazan, Kazan: A Life (New York: Knopf, 1988), p. 309.
13 “watch Her Highness?”: Wilson, Hot Times, p. 38.
14 “in take one”: Jeff Young, Kazan: The Master Discusses His Films (New York: Newmarket Press, 1999), p. 31.
15 “bursts of energy”: Melvyn Douglas and Tom Arthur, See You at the Movies (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1986), p. 149.
16 “lovers”: Young, Kazan, p. 31.
17 “don’t sell yourself”: Lawrence Langner to Katharine Hepburn, 5/18/46 (TGC).
18 “Everyone here is talking”: Lawrence Langner to ST, 6/6/46 (TGC).
19 “under obligation”: F. L. Hendrickson, internal memo, 6/25/46, Turner Entertainment/SW.
20 “going very well”: ST to Lawrence Langner, 7/15/46 (TGC).
21 “Mrs. Spencer Tracy”: Tina Gopadze Smith to the author, Milwaukee, 7/9/06.
22 “I can’t live”: William Self to the author, Los Angeles, 2/20/04.
23 “two years hence”: Los Angeles Times, 8/11/46.
24 “come on the set”: Paul Henreid, Ladies Man (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984), p. 178.
25 “I find my feeling”: New Republic, 3/17/47.
26 “not all great”: Jane Feely Desmond to the author.
27 “unsuccessful screenplay”: Arthur Hornblow, Jr., Columbia University Oral History, March 1959.
28 “falls in love”: Donald Ogden Stewart, By a Stroke of Luck (New York: Paddington Press, 1975), p. 285.
29 “Tracy wants”: Harold Hecht to Donald Ogden Stewart, 4/13/47 (DOS).
30 “Tracy … had refused”: Ella Winter to Jessie Weingarten, n.d. (DOS).
31 “In the book”: New York Sun, 9/10/47.
32 “their baby’s perambulator”: Royle, unpublished autobiography, p. 55.
33 “I’m getting old”: Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title (New York: Macmillan, 1971), p. 388.
34 “plenty of suits”: Larry Keethe, “I Call It Heart,” Photoplay, September 1948.
35 “very tricky scene”: Angela Lansbury to David Heeley and Joan Kramer, Los Angeles, 12/13/85 (TH).
36 “I was backstage”: McGilligan, Tender Comrades, p. 413.
37 “she got mad”: Murray, “Kate, the Untamed Shrew.”
38 “the speech that almost”: Newquist, A Special Kind of Magic, p. 66.
39 Hedda Hopper took care: Los Angeles Times, 9/1/47.
40 “had a real peeve on”: Los Angeles Evening Herald-Express, 9/9/47. By December the studio was denying rumors that Hepburn’s contract had been abrogated. “Don’t be surprised,” wrote Harrison Carroll, “if she comes out with a statement similar to the one made by Humphrey Bogart. She has already stated her views in an interview with a radio commentator a few days ago, in which she said she was not a communist sympathizer.”
41 “What the hell happened?”: Higham, Kate, p. 132.
42 “Claudette I knew”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Kramer.
43 “No contract”: Higham, Kate, p. 133.
44 “We all knew”: Al Weisel, “An Uncommon Woman,” Premiere, September 2003.
45 “ ‘bag of bones’ ”: Capra, The Name Above the Title, p. 390.
46 “Their personalities”: Swindell, Spencer Tracy, p. 208.
47 “Bob Thomas worked”: Emily Torchia to Selden West (SW).
48 “surprise of the picture”: Variety, 11/5/47.
49 “Mr. Tracy never talked”: Emily Torchia to Selden West.
CHAPTER 23 ADAM’S RIB
1 “He read that play”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Kramer.
2 “live through”: Arthur and Barbara Gelb, O’Neill (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), p. 885.
3 “red hot”: Variety, 3/24/48.
4 “President Truman”: Variety, 1/5/49.
5 “more attractive-looking”: New York Times, 4/23/48.
6 “ ‘He’s a prick’ ”: ST to Pete Martin.
7 “If somebody approached”: June Caldwell to the author.
8 “dinner meeting”: Ardmore, “Clinic.”
9 “very attracted”: Dr. Alathena Smith to Jane Ardmore, 7/26/72 (JKA).
10 “I watched my father”: Jane Feely Desmond to the author.
11 “I’m not going to be”: Frank Tracy to Selden West.
12 “NOT MUCH I CAN SAY”: ST to Patrick Norton, 5/19/48 (BT).
13 “I’ve come to work”: Daily Express, 5/28/48.
14 “appeared grumpy”: Eric Braun, Deborah Kerr (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978), p. 118.
15 “disconcerting to me”: Richard Schickel, The Men Who Made the Movies (New York: Atheneum, 1975), p. 177.
16 “largely Spencer”: George Cukor to Signe Hasso, 7/13/48 (AMPAS).
17 “long takes”: Freddie Young, Seventy Light Years (London: Faber and Faber, 1999), p. 74.
18 “do you mind”: Emanuel Levy, George Cukor: Hollywood’s Legendary Director and His Stars (New York: Morrow, 1994), p. 171.
19 “thrilled”: Katharine Hepburn to George Cukor, 8/10/48.
20 “real dirt”: Ibid.
21 “remember me”: Schary, Heyday, p. 180.
22 “wore himself out”: Bergman, Ingrid Bergman, My Story, p. 181.
23 “Mike Romanoff”: Susie Tracy to the author, Brentwood, 12/15/04.
24 “He and Gable”: Darryl Hickman to the author.
25 “That’s all right”: New York Daily News, 7/9/49.
26 “all hands and feet”: Sidney Fields, “Stewart Sticks to Movies,” undated clipping (SW).
27 “This normally would be”: Undated clipping (SW).
28 “Can you see it”: Garson Kanin, “Adam’s Rib: The Genesis,” Memories, October– November 1989.
29 “first time in thirty years”: Higham, Kate, p. 135. Technically, this could be correct, in that Woman of the Year was still unfinished when the studio bought it in July 1941.
30 “The Kanins would do”: George Stevens, Jr., Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age (New York: Knopf, 2006), p. 284.
31 “Some of the things Kate”: Crowther, notes, Tracy interview.
32 “whole tradition”: Kenneth Tynan, “Katharine Hepburn,” Everybody’s Magazine, 6/28/52.
33 “It was human”: Lambert, On Cukor, p. 201.
34 “the film represents”: Katharine Houghton in an e-mail to the author, 10/14/08.
35 “Spence and I”: Tynan, “Katharine Hepburn.”
36 “In the course of the shooting”: Kanin, Tracy and Hepburn, pp. 157–58.
37 “She was wonderful”: Charles Higham, Celebrity Circus (New York: Delacorte, 1979), p. 47.
38 “Damn it, George”: David Wayne to Selden West, 9
/21/93 (SW).
39 “in a kind of wonderment”: Fisher, Spencer Tracy: A Bio-Bibliography, p. 47.
40 “ ‘Yes, George’ ”: Marvin Kaplan to the author, via telephone, 11/19/06.
41 “a lot of stuff”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Kramer.
42 “drained of its most”: New York Times, 6/3/49.
43 “hopeless miscasting”: New Yorker, 6/11/49.
44 “I did it myself”: Robert Morley and Sewell Stokes, A Reluctant Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966), p. 207.
45 “nearly 40 films”: Daily Express, 5/28/48.
CHAPTER 24 FATHER OF THE BRIDE
1 “acting in Hollywood”: William Self to the author.
2 “so dense”: Katharine Hepburn to Selden West.
3 “round the three up”: Charles R. Sligh, Jr., to Selden West.
4 “couldn’t have left me”: Myrna Blyth, “Kate Talks Straight,” Ladies’ Home Journal, October 1991.
5 “the works”: Tracy’s stay at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital is documented in his 1949 pocket datebook (SLT).
6 “I remember him standing”: Katharine Houghton to the author.
7 “tortured soul”: Seymour Gray to Selden West, 2/14/92.
8 “mediocre successes”: Lawrence Weingarten, AFI seminar.
9 “Mrs. Feely”: Jane Feely Desmond to Selden West.
10 “such a big deal”: Jane Feely Desmond to the author, via telephone, 3/29/04.
11 “Spence came in”: Frank Tracy to Selden West (SW).
12 “blood-red bleeding heart”: Dr. Alathena Smith to Jane Ardmore.
13 “we sat near her”: Lenore Coffee, Storyline (London: Cassell, 1973), p. 118.
14 “live in small places”: Kanin, Tracy and Hepburn, p. 13.
15 comedian Jack Benny: Pandro S. Berman, undated interview, Vincente Minnelli autobiography files (AMPAS).
16 “there would be reservations”: Schary, Heyday, pp. 217–18.
17 “my brainchild”: Edward Streeter to Frances Goodrich Hackett, 1/24/49 (ES).
18 “the one I wanted”: Edward Streeter to Frances Goodrich Hackett, 7/18/49 (ES).
19 “little classic of comedy”: Vincente Minnelli (with Hector Arce), I Remember It Well (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974), p. 218.
20 “We talked”: Don Taylor to Selden West, via telephone, 2/7/96 (SW).
21 “not quite as jovial”: Joan Bennett to David Heeley and Joan Kramer, New York, 11/20/85 (TH).
22 “Even at eighteen”: Elizabeth Taylor to David Heeley and Joan Kramer, Los Angeles, 12/17/85 (TH).
23 “going to drive”: William Self to the author.
24 “limousine”: According to Edward Dmytryk, Tracy once asked Hepburn why she continued to work for M-G-M, a studio that was “far too patronizing” for her tastes. “It’s worth it when you go through Chicago,” she said.
25 assembled and previewed: Details of the initial preview for Father of the Bride are from the film’s script file at USC.
26 “I know you will realize”: Frances Goodrich Hackett to Edward Streeter, n.d. (ES).
27 “greatest set of legs”: Norman Lloyd to the author.
28 “I was O.K.”: Hepburn, Me, p. 267.
29 the film surpassed: Figures for Father of the Bride are from the Mannix ledger.
30 “No one”: Edward Streeter to ST, 5/4/50 (SLT).
31 “utterly impossible”: ST to Edward Streeter, 5/16/50 (ES).
32 “equally wonderful”: New York Times, 5/19/50.
33 “Tracy didn’t want”: Berman, undated interview, Minnelli files.
34 “In her practical way”: Minnelli, I Remember It Well, p. 238.
35 “Am very happy”: Pandro S. Berman to ST, 9/13/50, Turner Entertainment/SW.
36 “YOU MAY FORGET”: ST to Katharine Hepburn, undated telegram (KHLA).
37 outed the relationship: A 1948 profile in Movieland detailed “the most incredible sort of rumors” about Hepburn. “In Hartford, Connecticut, Miss Hepburn’s home town, a typist who works for the Aetna Life Insurance Company told me, ‘You know, of course, that she’s been madly in love with Spencer Tracy for years. Everyone knows that. But Mrs. Tracy won’t give him a divorce.’ ” But Richard Gehman’s 1950 assertions weren’t labeled as rumors.
38 “They are together”: Richard Gehman, “Hepburn,” Flair, December 1950.
39 “We started the evening”: Milwaukee Sentinel, 6/12/67.
40 “my first party”: Constance Collier to Katharine Hepburn, Monday (NYPL).
41 “anything was wrong”: Don Taylor to Selden West.
42 “last three comedies”: Arthur Frudenfeld, “Tracy Got Best Breaks on Walker Date at Cox.” Unidentified clipping (NYPL).
43 “not too successful”: W. Kendall Jones, “Pat and Mike” coverage, 3/4/50 (MGM).
44 “machinery of justice”: Eleazar Lipsky, “Johnny O’Hara’s Life,” story outline, 5/13/49 (MGM).
45 “It was traditional”: John Sturges to David Heeley and Joan Kramer, Los Angeles, 12/13/85 (TH).
46 “Five years later”: Norman, The Hollywood Greats, p. 90.
47 “chortled and howled”: Lawrence Weingarten to Dore Schary, 1/5/51, Turner Entertainment/SW.
CHAPTER 25 ROUGH PATCH
1 “great to see you”: John Tracy to Selden West, via fax, n.d. (SW).
2 “I kind of scouted”: William Self to the author.
3 “terrible little apartment”: Hepburn, Me, p. 398.
4 “Did Spence come?”: Constance Collier to Katharine Hepburn, Sunday (KHNY).
5 “I don’t know”: Constance Collier to Katharine Hepburn, 1/13/51 (KHNY).
6 “There was a time”: Darryl Hickman to the author, via e-mail, 4/5/07.
7 “By prearrangement”: William O. Douglas, Go East, Young Man (New York: Random House, 1974), p. 432.
8 “bane of my life”: Frank Tracy to Selden West.
9 “When he came”: Jimmy Lydon to the author, via telephone, 1/16/06.
10 “the Spence I knew”: Norman, The Hollywood Greats, pp. 81–82.
11 “I was confronted”: O’Brien, The Wind at My Back, p. 308.
12 “all business”: James Arness to the author, via telephone, 2/14/04.
13 “The thing I remember”: John Sturges to David Heeley and Joan Kramer, Los Angeles, 12/13/85 (TH).
14 “truly the culmination”: ST to Jenny Feely, Tuesday.
15 “received me”: Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, 7/8/51.
16 “I’m just a white-haired”: Daily Mirror (London), 5/28/51.
17 “awfully tough time”: Constance Collier to Theresa Helburn, 6/8/51 (TGC).
18 “M-G-M have a picture”: Constance Collier to Katharine Hepburn, 5/29/51 (KHNY).
19 “many nights”: John Huston, An Open Book (New York: Knopf, 1980), p. 202.
20 “terribly good friends”: Joan Fontaine to Anne Edwards, as quoted in A Remarkable Woman (New York: Morrow, 1985), p. 279.
21 “rough patch”: Katharine Houghton to the author, via e-mail, 11/4/06.
22 “Spence’s ulcer”: Constance Collier to Katharine Hepburn, 6/6/51 (KHNY).
23 “Dore Schary was sort of”: Lucinda Ballard, Southern Methodist University Oral History with Ronald L. Davis.
24 “Since Schary took over”: Vincent Sherman, Studio Affairs (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), p. 227.
25 “I’ve been waiting”: Mervyn LeRoy, Southern Methodist University Oral History with Ronald L. Davis, 5/16/77.
26 “seeing her in Paris”: Lauren Bacall, By Myself and Then Some (New York: Harper Entertainment, 2005), p. 495.
27 “She plays tennis”: Kanin, Tracy and Hepburn, p. 169.
28 “intimately discussed”: John Kobal, People Will Talk (New York: Knopf, 1986), p. 338.
29 “all I need”: Kanin, Tracy and Hepburn, p. 177.
30 “He asked me”: Los Angeles Times, 4/6/52.
31 “an agony”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Krame
r.
32 “Too many pictures”: New York Times, 1/20/52.
33 “those conferences”: Kobal, People Will Talk, p. 338.
34 “put his glasses on”: Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg, The Celluloid Muse (London: Angus and Robertson, 1969), p. 64.
35 “atomic bomb”: The Daily Record (Stroudsburg, Pa.), 11/6/51.
36 “paint the sea”: Spencer Tracy, 1951 datebook (SLT).
37 Millionairess: Hepburn was reported to be reading the play in April 1941, when she was considering doing it on Broadway. In a 1975 interview she spoke of Shaw having wanted her to do a movie of it. “I read it aloud and thought the first act was good, the second act was worse, and the third act was absolutely hopeless. So I said no.”
38 “touring actress”: George Cukor to “Corse,” 2/8/51 (AMPAS).
39 “written a line”: Higham, Kate, p. 150. In early drafts, the exact line is “She is beautyfully stacked, that kid.” In the draft of November 28, 1951, the word “stacked” was changed to “packed.” The word “choice” does not appear as “cherce” in any draft of the script. It is still “choice” in actor Chuck Connors’ copy of the script at USC, which contains changes to December 27.
40 “just flattened out”: Robert Emmet Long, ed., George Cukor: Interviews (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001), p. 148.
41 “Spence would say”: William Self to the author.
42 “batted ideas”: Higham, Kate, p. 150.
43 “Spencer massaged”: Ibid.
44 “a big brother”: Levy, George Cukor, p. 206.
45 “dinner with Spence”: William Self to the author.
46 “Lawford … was never”: Frank Tracy to Selden West.
47 “got me a part”: William Self to the author.
48 “ ‘old Mayer group’ ”: Hollywood Reporter, 5/7/52.
49 “this nuisance”: Dore Schary to ST, 5/7/52, Dore Schary Papers, Wisconsin State Historical Society, Madison.
50 “When my mood was high”: Gene Tierney (with Mickey Herskowitz), Self-Portrait (New York: Wyden Books, 1979), p. 173.
51 “happened so quickly”: Kirk Douglas, The Ragman’s Son (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), p. 170.
52 “making love”: Los Angeles Times, 5/29/52.
CHAPTER 26 AT LOOSE ENDS
1 “one occasion”: This film is archived at John Tracy Clinic. Coverage of the dedication was published in the Los Angeles Times, 5/4/52.
James Curtis Page 127