Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [176]
I know by coming here I saved the lives of these twenty-two people. But that isn’t why I’m here. I don’t care anything about saving them. They’re murderers. I know the law says they’re not because I’m still alive, but that’s not their fault. And the law doesn’t know that a lot of things that were very important to me—silly things, maybe—like a belief in justice, and an idea that men were civilized, and a feeling of pride that this country of mine was different from all others—the law doesn’t know that those things were burned to death within me that night. I came here today for my own sake. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I couldn’t stop thinking about them with every breath and every step I took. And I didn’t believe Katherine when she said—Katherine is the young lady who was going to marry me. Maybe some day after I’ve paid for what I did there’ll be a chance to begin again. And then maybe Katherine and I—
As Lang envisioned the film’s final moments, Joe could be seen fumbling in his pocket, and as he says the last words of his statement, his eyes come to rest on what he has pulled from his pocket, nestled among tobacco crumbs and lint—a solitary salted peanut. “I guess that’s about all I can say,” he says and pops it into his mouth. Instantly, the scene would cut to a close-up of Katherine. “Her eyes dimmed with tears, her face aglow in recognition of the Joe she fell in love with, she moves toward him, smiling her forgiveness. ‘Joe—’ She moves closer and closer until her face, smiling with tremendous happiness, blots out everything and the picture fades out.”
Lang later blamed Mankiewicz and the administrators of the Production Code for being forced to shoot an alternate ending in which Tracy and Sidney embrace in court and actually kiss at the fade-out. “A man gives a speech that … is very well written and extremely well delivered, and then suddenly, for no reason whatsoever—in front of the judge and the audience and God knows who—they turn around and they kiss each other. For me, a perfect ending was when he said, ‘Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me.’ You could have shown a closeup of Sylvia Sidney—she’s very happy—he could look at her—period.”
The idea of the kiss came from somewhere inside M-G-M, as the Production Code Administration’s correspondence on the film makes no mention of it. The order to reshoot the close-up of Katherine may well have come from Sam Katz, whose memory of those first desperate rushes would surely have suggested a climactic embrace for the couple. In communicating the order to retake the shot, Mankiewicz told Lang, speaking of the original ending, “Frankly, I agree with you that if this holds up before an audience, it is to be preferred as an ending.” Dutifully, both Tracy and Sidney played the scene as prescribed, and Fury finished after fifty-five turbulent days.
“It was a horrendous test under fire,” Mankiewicz concluded, “particularly for someone like Spencer. It was an important part, an emotional part. And then, of course, to have … a finish of which everybody connected with the picture can only be ashamed.” It wasn’t the clinch that undercut the film’s impact when it had its initial showing, though, but rather the scene in which Lang had the voices and images of the convicted men following Joe down those deserted streets of the city. “We had a first preview,” said Mankiewicz, “at which the film was literally laughed off the screen because Lang had [that] sequence in which ghosts chased Spencer Tracy through the streets. He turned around and the ghosts would disappear behind trees à la Walt Disney. Obviously, that sequence had to be cut out of the film, but Fritz refused to cut anything. It was Eddie Mannix who fired Fritz off the lot and told me to cut the film.3 The subsequent preview was a smashing success, after that one deletion, and the reviews were