Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [142]
Little about Rothstein’s criminal activities could ever be proven, and even the events surrounding his death were in dispute. In 1909 Rothstein married a New York showgirl named Carolyn Green, who, though estranged, was still his wife at the time of his killing in 1928. She claimed to know the inside dope on her husband’s various enterprises, including the truth behind his murder. As Mrs. Carolyn Rothstein Behar, she granted Fox Film a $2,500 option on the rights to a memoir she proposed to write on her life with the man Damon Runyon dubbed “The Brain.”
Rothstein was a contemporary of Winnie Sheehan’s in criminal and political circles, and it was Sheehan’s idea not only to make a film about him but to coordinate its release with the publication of the book on which it was supposedly based. The deal with Behar was signed in July 1933, not long before Sheehan was to leave for Europe. It gave her time to write the book on her own but reserved the studio’s right to impose a ghostwriter in the event she was unable to finish. The plan was to have the story serialized in a first-class magazine or published in book form no later than March 1, 1934.
When Sheehan left the first week in August, he was accompanied by playwright and scenarist Edwin Burke, who was to spend his time in Paris researching a film on the life of chemist Louis Pasteur. By the time of their return in October, Burke had not only drawn the assignment from Sheehan to write the screenplay based on Behar’s memoir, but to direct the film as well. A former actor, alumnus of the American Academy and a fellow Lamb, Burke pressed for the unlikely casting of Spencer Tracy to play America’s best-known Jewish gangster.
In New York, Burke stopped off to work with Behar. Looking to punch up the story and fill in a number of blanks, he interviewed some of Rothstein’s former associates, and the collaboration resulted in an original story for the screen called “Now I’ll Tell.” Satisfied the film project was on its way, Sheehan hired novelist Donald Henderson Clarke to bring the book into being. In 1929 Clarke had published his own book on the subject, In the Reign of Rothstein; two days after he came aboard, Behar signed a contract with Vanguard Press, Clarke’s longtime publisher. Burke now found himself in the position of working ahead of Behar and Clarke, adding in material that would more than likely differ from events described in the book. Behar was surprisingly scrupulous about what she wrote, and although she wouldn’t object to Burke’s fabrications, neither would she agree to say they were true.
On February 8, 1934, Fox purchased worldwide motion picture rights to the book for $25,000. By that point, Burke had abandoned any pretense of his picture being a literal representation of the book, and when the shooting script was finalized on February 23, the name of Tracy’s character, the film’s title notwithstanding, had become “Murray Golden.” Tracy was tense and withdrawn during the first days of filming, his police guard ever-present, and he seemed to rely on Burke to an unusual degree in characterizing Rothstein.
The film had been in production scarcely a week when a second extortion letter arrived: “Rattlesnake has not give orders to take you yet[.] I give you nice chance then I strike if you disobey[.] I am plenty good to you I see mother and baby I see you and your queen … I want to see the money with note say that it ok from you and your queen you have my orders.”
From March 6 to March 11, two detective lieutenants were stationed at the house on Holmby. On the evening of March 10, a dummy package was prepared as specified in the first letter, and Tracy’s black chauffeur, Walter,