Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [111]
Allotted twenty-four days, the filming of 20,000 Years in Sing Sing got under way at the First National Studios in Burbank on August 15, 1932. Matching close shots with the footage Enright made in Ossining was a tedious process, veteran cinematographer Barney McGill and his crew blocking the action with the help of an on-set Moviola and scores of reference stills. Erected on Burbank’s Stage 3 were shower and visiting rooms, the prison’s barbershop, machine and shoemaking shops, a mess hall, death row, and a faithful re-creation of Lawes’ own office, down to the books on his shelves. Director Michael Curtiz worked the company in twelve-hour shifts, generally getting four to five minutes of usable film a day.
When Davis started work on the twenty-fifth, she found an instant rapport with her leading man. “He was crazy about my performance in a terrible independent potboiler I’d made with Pat O’Brien, The Menace,” she said. “It was the first picture he’d seen of mine—he thought I was different from any other actress in Hollywood.” Davis was only nine days on Sing Sing, but could vividly recall Tracy’s approach to the job: “Spence didn’t have any pretenses, and for an actor that’s like saying the Hudson River never freezes over. Most of them are so worried about makeup and camera angles that they don’t give you what you must have in a scene: concentration. They just stand there and look beautiful … But Tracy had no such conceit. For the run of the picture we had this wonderful vitality and love for each other.”
The guts of the picture were the scenes that took place in the old cell block of the prison. Warners arranged to shoot the interiors on M-G-M’s Stage 10 in Culver City, where the set built for The Big House was still standing. Limited to four days, Curtiz shot eighteen hours at a stretch, driving cast and crew almost to the breaking point. Yet, predictably, the only outburst came from Warren Hymer, who showed up drunk on the second night, appearing nearly three hours late for a 6:30 call. When he refused to don his wardrobe, Hymer, who had been let out of his Fox contract after the debacle of Goldie, was sent home and docked accordingly. The next day he was on time but clearly hungover. When Curtiz said something, he responded by saying, “Aw, dry up, or I’ll walk out on you.”
Tracy immediately got in his face: “If you ever come here like that again, I’ll save you the trouble. I’ll walk out and refuse to finish the picture as long as you’re in the cast. Then they can decide whether they want to re-shoot the whole picture with someone else in my part and keep you, or whether they’ll re-shoot the few scenes you’re in and keep me!” Hymer sobered up for the balance of the shoot but was late again on two subsequent occasions. Retakes and process work finished 20,000 Years in Sing Sing on September 14, two days over schedule. Tracy had just a week to study the script for his next picture at Fox, a comedy-romance with Joan Bennett titled Pier 13.
That summer, there had been a conference on deaf education at UCLA. The principal of the Clarke School for the Deaf in Massachusetts was attending some of the sessions, and Louise was eager to meet her. The Clarke was the first permanent oral school in the United States, and the first to teach deaf children to speak. John’s leg was improving steadily, and Louise knew he would soon be able to go away to school. “He needed more work,” she said. “He needed children with their companionship and competition, and there seemed no way he could get this in Los Angeles.” There was no school of national standing closer than St. Louis, and Louise didn’t like what she had heard of most