Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [133]
About this time, Dick Mook asked Louise to sit for an interview. He was one of the first people Spence had told about the separation: “If you think it’s necessary to run a story on it, go ahead and write it. It’s the only one we’ll give out.” The news about him and Loretta Young had subsequently made all the papers. Louise hadn’t said anything to the press, and Dick thought she should at least have a chance to give her side of the story. “I’d known Louise and Spencer—intimately—almost from the time they first came to Hollywood,” he said. “I’d done one of the first stories on him the magazines carried, and from that casual contact have developed two of the few friendships I really prize. The announcement of their separation hurt me as much as though I, myself, had been involved.”
The night after the story broke, Louise and Mook sat across from one another in a smoky Los Angeles nightclub. (Mook was still taking her around to industry events and previews, and when Spence saw him, he’d usually ask, “Are you seeing to it that Louise has a good time?”) Dick thought her remarkably composed that night.
“There’s nothing about it that necessitates your wearing such a long face,” she said calmly. “It’s just one of those things. It doesn’t mean that this is the end. In every marriage, no matter how happy it is, there are bound to come times when some sort of adjustment is necessary. This happens to be one of those times in ours. This ‘separation’ will simply clarify matters. We’re not going to get a divorce. At least, that isn’t our present intention. Nor am I going abroad with the children, as the papers reported. We’ll probably be back together by the time your story breaks.”
Mook said something about the Hollywood press and how anybody’s affairs were everybody’s. “Hollywood had nothing to do with it,” she said, declining the bait.
I don’t feel bitter towards Hollywood because Hollywood has done nothing to us—except give us more money than we’ve ever had before. This and a chance to have a home of our own. I love this place. So does Spencer. I’ll admit that if he had been engaged in any other kind of work in some other city, we could probably have worked things out quietly between ourselves without having to tell the world our troubles, but that would only have been because he wouldn’t have been in the public eye. Newspapers are here to give the people news. If he had been news in some other city, it would have been the same thing.
We lead a very close family life. We seldom go out anywhere, and we see few people outside our immediate family. We both felt we were getting into a rut. How many times have I been out alone with you? Can you remember? Hasn’t Spencer even urged you on numerous occasions to ask me out so I’d get a different viewpoint, get to talk about different things?
He needs the same change. I’ve repeatedly told him to go out with other people. Occasionally he’s gone out with some of the girls he’s worked with. I haven’t minded because he always told me about it. One of his recent pictures he worked nights a great deal. His leading lady happened to be single and they had dinner together a few times. Once, one of his other pictures was being previewed. I’d already seen it, so he asked this girl to go with him and people saw them there. Why shouldn’t he take a friend who was interested to see it?
Marriage out here may be a little more difficult than elsewhere because everyone knows everyone else—at least by sight—and there’s little else to talk about. I can’t truthfully say that Spencer and I are still madly, passionately in love with each other. I don’t believe that kind of love ever lasts. It burns itself out by its very intensity. But in its place comes a deep, understanding companionship