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paper noted, “was torn up.” This must have come as news to Leo Morrison, who was aware of M-G-M’s interest in his former client and had an obvious stake in repairing the relationship. Sometime after that item appeared, Morrison got back in touch with Tracy and, subsequently, the two men entered into an oral agreement whereby Morrison would collect a 5 percent commission on all monies received under the deal were he “successful in securing the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract.” Morrison, who was close to M-G-M general manager Eddie Mannix, went into action and was apparently in talks by the time Tracy began work on It’s a Small World on February 2, 1935. Five days into the film, Fox attempted to commence employment under the terms of the new contract, but Tracy, evidently acting under Morrison’s advice, never signed and returned the letters agreeing to appear.

Actress Astrid Allwyn could remember the “tremendous tension” on the set of It’s a Small World more vividly than the film itself. “There is no question in my mind that something was wrong, but I was not that sophisticated to understand the actions of other actors.” There was the pressure on Tracy to sign and return the letters activating his new contract, something Allwyn could not possibly have known. He was also shooting two very different pictures simultaneously, one requiring a long introductory sequence played entirely in the rain. Cinematographer Arthur Miller recalled that director Irving Cummings was “half loaded” on the picture, a circumstance which could not have improved his leading man’s disposition. Moreover, Tracy was in the process of moving for the sixth time in four years. The result was that he was withdrawn and quiet on the set, a considerable counterpoint to the carefree vacationing lawyer he was playing in the film.

The story itself bore a resemblance to the recent Frank Capra comedy It Happened One Night, continuing the proud Fox tradition of cranking out quick and inexpensive knockoffs of the hit pictures of other studios. The mood on the set lightened once Dante’s Inferno wrapped, but then Tracy got beaned with a dinner plate while shooting a kitchen scene with actress Wendy Barrie. The injury required five stitches over his right eye and was responsible for a week’s delay in finishing the picture. Tracy was seen at a lavish cocktail party given by Pat and Eloise O’Brien on Valentine’s Day, a two-inch bandage gracing his lower forehead. Sol Wurtzel used the hiatus to make some retakes on Dante’s Inferno, specifically a new ending in the aftermath of the ship disaster in which Tracy’s character looked perfectly natural wearing a bandage. It’s a Small World closed on March 2, 1935, and Tracy retired to the polo fields at Riviera, where he took a serious spill while practicing a few days later.

Whether it was the fall or the move or simply the stress of outmaneuvering the people at Fox, Tracy dropped from sight in early March and headed east with Hugh Tully, an ostler at Riviera. Hughie, the brother of Jim Tully, the famed author of Beggars of Life, knew horses about as well as anyone, and he convinced Tracy that the best polo stock was to be had elsewhere. “Horses out here are no good,” he said. “Better go back east—New England, upstate New York. Good horse farms.” The two men decided they’d drive back to New York and buy some horses. “They’d go off to Virginia, mosey around,” as Frank Tracy remembered it.

They’d be gone a couple of weeks. So before they left, Spence sat down with a stack of cards. Post cards. He wrote about four to his mother, four to Louise, four to Johnny, a couple to Carroll. “Today we did this, and today we did that.” He figured that he would probably not be able to handle a correspondence, and people would begin to wonder where the hell he was. So he got all these cards stamped and addressed, and he gave them to Hughie. First mistake. He said, “Hughie, every few days, mail some of these cards.” Well, Hughie got drunk and he mailed them all the same day. [Spence’s] poor mother and Louise were getting these cards, all of different