Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [129]
Alarmed, Young’s agent, former First National executive Dave Thompson, phoned her mother to advise her that Tracy was widely regarded around town as an alcoholic. “He must have meant Lee Tracy, not Spence,” Gretchen said when her mother relayed the news. Worse to Gladys Belzer was the fact that Tracy was a Catholic with a wife and two kids. “Don’t fall in love with him!” she warned.
“Oh, Mama … I think I already have!”
Amid much fanfare, The Power and the Glory had its world premiere at New York’s Gaiety Theatre on the night of August 16, 1933. Although the film itself drew oddly mixed reviews—the Times, Variety, and the New York American all according it raves, the World-Telegram, Herald Tribune, and Evening Post somewhat less emphatic—notices for the actors, Tracy in particular, were exceptionally fine. For the first time, he saw such words as “flawless,” “vivid,” and “brilliant” applied to one of his movie performances. Given the forgettable fare in which he routinely appeared, many of the best reactions were couched in degrees of genuine surprise. Regina Crewe of the American marveled at the transformative arc of his work in tones that suggested she never would have thought it possible: “The man grows in stature before our eyes. He develops gradually, logically, inexorably from a rural urchin of the swimmin’ hole to the iron man of far-reaching affairs. He becomes a familiar figure, understandable in all his strengths and weaknesses, at once admirable and fearsome. The role dominates the drama. And Spencer Tracy dominates the role.” Bland Johannsen of the Daily Mirror thought Tracy’s performance matchless. “He never has had a more exacting role, or one which he handled with such sure skill and finish.” Mordaunt Hall’s notice in the Times went so far as to declare, “No more convincing performance has been given on the screen than Spencer Tracy’s impersonation of Tom Garner.”
Tracy’s off-screen relationship with Loretta Young paid dividends for director Frank Borzage. Man’s Castle is one of Borzage’s best-remembered films. (SUSIE TRACY)
The Gaiety being a legit house commandeered by Fox for its class product, The Power and the Glory became the first roadshow attraction of the new season, a two-a-day reserved-seat event going up against such mass-market favorites as Tugboat Annie and RKO’s Morning Glory. Driven by the reviews as much as the ballyhoo—and more than a little curiosity regarding its “Narratage” technique—The Power and the Glory grossed $9,500 for its first seven days, solid business for an eight-hundred-seat theater—better, in fact, than Cavalcade had done at the exact same venue. It dipped only slightly for its second week, M-G-M’s all-star Dinner at Eight giving it the stiffest possible competition. The Power and the Glory managed a total of three weeks and five days at the Gaiety and could have stayed even longer had the theater not been committed to the premiere of Berkeley Square on September 13. Adroitly, Fox shifted the picture to the new Radio City Music Hall (as it had Cavalcade), and it played yet another week at the theater that had supplanted the Roxy as the world’s largest.
By all standards, the picture looked like a hit. Fueled again by mostly excellent reviews, it did comparable business in Chicago and Los Angeles (where it was incongruously paired with speakeasy impresario Texas Guinan’s torrid stage act). Past its initial showcasings in major metropolitan markets, however, The Power and the Glory was a loser, failing to ignite the passions of grassroots moviegoers who knew only vaguely who Spencer Tracy was, who preferred Colleen Moore in her flapper days, and who liked their storytelling straightforward and linear. Subsequent runs drew flat rentals of twenty-five dollars or less in neighborhood