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she would be at all interested in such a venture. “She said she had tried the same thing herself once and had had to give it up. She had been able to get neither cooperation nor interest from anyone.” Louise learned later that, according to a survey, there were more than two hundred deaf children of school age in the state of California who were not in school because there were inadequate facilities. While Louise was sputtering over the complete lack of understanding and interest, even in the salons of the state capital, an educator asked her, “Why are you interested in the deaf?” She could see his point. “Most people are not interested in the deaf,” he went on, “until the problem becomes their own.”

The Power and the Glory called for a lot of exteriors, significantly Garner’s standoff with striking yard men, the Wobblies vilifying him at the scene of a nighttime rally. Garner wades into them, leaving his bodyguards at the car, completely unfazed by the dangerous mood of the mob. They were shooting out near the rail yards, and Howard drew his extras from the hundreds of men who lived like prairie dogs on a vast stretch of flat land that bordered the eastern edge of downtown Los Angeles. Seeing those men working long hours for a day wage of three dollars and a box lunch mollified whatever hard feelings Tracy was nursing over his temporary cut in pay.

The picture was shot largely on Eastman’s new super-panchromatic film stock, enabling cinematographer James Wong Howe to capture interiors with approximately one-third the light normally needed for such scenes. “Super Pan” brought out new subtleties of shadow and texture, permitting makeup artist Ern Westmore to achieve the old-age effects called for in the script with a minimum of fuss. In Tracy’s case, the lines naturally present in his face were emphasized with a dusting of powder over a foundation base, while Colleen Moore was aged with a careful orchestration of shadows and highlights. Moore also wore a gray wig, while Tracy had his own hair somewhat less convincingly altered with liquid whitener applied with a toothbrush. Much of the effect was achieved with wardrobe, posture, and, as Charles Dudley, the head of the Fox makeup department, put it, “sincerity—characterization and genuine acting ability.”

To Tracy’s mind, Bill Howard was just about the best director he had ever worked with, a dark, meticulous Irishman who gave the film tone and nuance without getting in the way of either the script or the performances. “He had none of the flamboyancies of many directors,” Colleen Moore remembered. “He never raised his voice. He and I had great rapport. I could tell what he was thinking and do it before we talked about it.” Howard, who began directing pictures in 1921, was the ideal man to stage the pantomime scenes in which the actions and words of the characters were simultaneously expressed in voice-over by Garner’s friend, Henry.

While the nonlinear structure of the story made the development of his character all the more difficult, Tracy displayed a range he had never before shown on screen, going as he did from the childlike spirit of the early Tom to the burnt-out shell of the rail executive at the end of his days. It was screen acting at its most profound, forceful yet natural, at times quiet to the point of inaudibility. It was as if he was trying to push the conventions of the screen to new levels of subtlety. And yet, whenever anyone asked, he invariably cited the Lunt-Fontanne film version of The Guardsman as the ideal convergence of stage and talking picture technique. “Look how the dialogue overlapped in that,” he would say. “They never waited for each other to finish talking. It was the most natural thing in the world. When you and I talk or when any two people are chatting they don’t wait every time for the other to finish before starting, the way they do in most pictures. People anticipate the last few words each other will say and butt in on them. That’s one of the things that makes Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne natural. And it’s their naturalness that