Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [17]
Charley’s Aunt with Selena Royle and Ken Daigneau proved so popular that a Friday matinee was added to accommodate the demand. Cornered and Mary’s Ankle proved equally popular, but then Daigneau gave notice to go into a play on Broadway. Wright, with just three weeks left to the season, lacked a leading man. “A lack,” Royle said, “which could not be corrected in Grand Rapids, which could hardly be said to abound in theatrical talent. It was an expensive thing to send to New York for another actor, pay his fare both ways, and give him a salary commensurate with his two weeks’ expenses.”
A month earlier, Clarence Dean had watched Tracy play the bootlegger king alongside Selena Royle and suggested that Tracy “would indeed be a fitting man to play opposite so fine an actress as Miss Royle.” After conferring with his new star and John Ellis, who thought Tracy talented but cocky, Wright cabled Milwaukee and asked Tracy to come back in the role he wanted—as Selena Royle’s leading man.
Tracy quit a job selling pianos—something he admittedly wasn’t any good at—and returned to Grand Rapids with Louise and Johnny. They set up housekeeping at the Browning, an apartment hotel about seven blocks from the theater. Spence and Selena played a classic farce, Are You a Mason?, for their first week as a team, and although the pacing flagged on opening night and more than a few cues got dropped amid all the horseplay, a natural chemistry—the sheer fun of performing together—won the crowd over, and the week finished in the black.
Selena Royle, circa 1923. (NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY)
A far better test of the Tracy-Royle combination came the week of September 1. The company performed the intimate George Broadhurst drama Bought and Paid For, with Selena in the role of the social-climbing Virginia and Tracy as Stafford, the alcoholic millionaire she marries not for love, but status. The play was old (1911) but potent in its simplicity and its quiet moments, and both Tracy and Royle attacked their roles with subtlety and intelligence. The cast had the luxury of a matinee for the first performance—it was Labor Day—and had settled into their roles when Louise witnessed the 8:30 performance that evening.
The play gripped her as few did, with Stafford’s drunken rages reflected in Virginia’s desperation and terror. Tracy was chilling at the bottom of the second act when Selena locked herself in her bedroom and Spence, bent on spousal rape, grabbed the poker from the fireplace and beat the door in like a madman. A troubled hush fell over the auditorium.
The third act was devoted to Virginia’s determination to leave her husband, now sober and remorseful, and Tracy’s performance, all eagerness and resolve with a shading of doom, found a poignance largely missing in the text. Ignoring all his promises and his extravagant gifts, Selena placed her ring on the table at the end of the act and exited for good. Louise sat mesmerized as Spence at first stood motionless, unable to comprehend what had finally and inevitably happened to his marriage, and then, after what seemed an eternity, he picked the ring up and read the inscription softly to himself: “From Robert to Virginia with eternal love.”
His silences were astonishing in their power. No artificiality, no grand gestures, no playing to the gallery. He scarcely moved; it was all in his eyes and the way he held himself. Subdued, natural, he was the character in all of its subtle shadings. He demanded the crowd’s attention, dared them not to feel what he was feeling, not to think what he was thinking. He was unlike any actor they had ever seen before, not merely because he underplayed a fragile moment that could easily have drawn groans, but because he did it all from within.
“I suppose it might have taken two minutes,” Louise said, thinking back on the scene, “but the whole thing, the expression, the way he looked … was so moving. It was a beautiful moment, and I could see the lights on the marquee. And in my mind I said, ‘He is going to be a star. A really great star.’ ”
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