Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [139]
Writer-producer Lucien Hubbard was in charge of The Show-Off but word was that Irving Thalberg was the real force behind the scenes, and Tracy hoped something larger was at hand than a deal for a single picture. He had never before worked at M-G-M, had never even been on the lot, but to be an M-G-M player was to be among the finest array of acting talent anywhere in the world. The Barrymores were under contract to M-G-M, as were Helen Hayes, Marie Dressler, Robert Montgomery, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, and Greta Garbo. Metro pictures had a sheen and a respectability second to none, and the brand definitely meant something at the box office. No studio was as profitable nor had as many resources at its disposal.
The wiry Hubbard, who knew Tracy from the Uplifters Club, had been William Wellman’s producer on Wings and would later play himself, a midlife war correspondent, in Wellman’s Story of G.I. Joe. He knew how to make B-pictures quickly, but with the spit and polish of someone who took pride in his work and had an excellent sense of story and casting. His treatment of The Show-Off was a model of classy packaging. Tracy’s leading lady would be M-G-M contract player Madge Evans, the same actress who had appeared opposite him in Sam Harris’ ill-fated production of Dread. Grant Mitchell would be in the picture, as would Henry Wadsworth, Lois Wilson, Clara Blandick, and Alan Edwards, solid players all. The script was by Herman J. Mankiewicz, who had adapted a number of plays to film, most recently Rose Franken’s Another Language and Dinner at Eight. James Wong Howe, who shot The Power and the Glory, would be in charge of the camerawork, and the director would be Charles F. “Chuck” Riesner, a specialist in comedy who had been eight years with Chaplin and codirected Buster Keaton’s spectacular Steamboat Bill Jr. Riesner’s background—he had been a prizefighter, vaudevillian, song writer, and actor—somehow made him ideal for telling the story of J. Aubrey Piper, the well-meaning rattlebrain of Kelly’s classic play.
Tracy began work on January 29, 1934, having taken a corner suite at the Beverly Wilshire. Mastering the carnation-wearing Piper, his boasts and vulnerabilities, was as intense a job of preparation as he had ever undertaken for a film. Blessed with exceptional material and fueled by countless cups of black coffee, he managed one of the most deeply layered performances he had ever given, at once dim and overbearing and yet desperate to the point of near-tragedy. Leavening the character still further was Clara Blandick’s acid performance as Ma Fisher, Amy’s skeptical mother, who can’t stand her daughter’s windbag of a boyfriend and makes no attempt to hide it. Aubrey is a big talker who holds down a clerical position with the Mid-Atlantic; all his clothes are castoffs, all his cars are demos. He invades the Fisher family like a backslapping pestilence. Amy’s parents are suddenly “Mumsie” and “Popsie-Wopsy.” The house rings with forced laughter.
“How do you think your mother’s gonna take it?” Aubrey asks Amy, suddenly quiet and pensive when they decide to tie the knot.
“Well, I don’t know. You see—”
“Well, I know she’s not just as fond of me as she might be, is she?”
“Oh,” says Amy, “but it’s not that she doesn’t approve of you, Aubrey. But …”
“It’s because I’m not serious enough,” he says, now a chastened little boy, all knowing and fidgety. “I joke too much to suit a lot of people. Sometimes I just try to kid ’em, you know, and they think I mean it. You think I’m on the level, don’t you Amy?”
They marry, Ma Fisher sourly resigned to the situation as they take their own apartment. Aubrey can’t handle money, can’t live on thirty dollars a week. He spends everything he makes, fills the apartment with tables and lamps and a fancy record changer he can’t afford. (“Plays twelve records without stoppin’,” he