Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [178]
“The house could not be plainer or simpler,” Spence enthused. “It’s the grounds that make it look pretentious. Why, if it weren’t for the grounds—if this house were sitting on a small lot—any stock player making $100 a week could own it. It’s so small and so plainly furnished that we’ll only have to keep a cook and a houseboy.” And, Mook added, a field hand to tend the horses, the grove, the chickens, the alfalfa…
Tracy had several rooms added—known collectively as “the children’s wing”—and broke ground on a swimming pool around the time of his thirty-sixth birthday. On the rare day off he cut alfalfa or tended the horses or took in the games at Riviera, where he would watch from the sidelines and count the days until he could get back into the action.1 Fury was previewed May 18 at the Fox Wilshire, and despite Lang’s displeasure over the trims Mankiewicz had been forced to make, the first reviews, as Tracy would note in his datebook, were “marvelous.” The man from Daily Variety saw a “consummate exhibition of a man whose tolerant, compassionate nature is galled to maniacal vengeance against men who, without justification, sought to burn him in jail.” It was, said the Hollywood Reporter, the best thing Tracy had ever done. Gratified, he played six relatively carefree periods of polo the day following their publication and celebrated five full months of sobriety. Three days later, he and Louise boarded the famed Matson luxury liner, the S.S. Lurline, and sailed for Hawaii.
On the sidelines at Riviera with Walt Disney, circa 1936. (AUTHOR’S COLLECTION)
The crossing took five days and was mercifully free of entreaties from the studio. The weather was beautiful, and Tracy worked on his tan between naps, champagne receptions (where he stuck to tea and soft drinks), and movies in the ship’s theater. Louise reveled in the social scene, posing for photos, swimming and reading, dancing when she could get Spence out onto the floor. When they docked at Honolulu a crowd was waiting, mostly kids but more than a few adults, and they all surged forward, brandishing notebooks and tablets and pencils sharp enough to draw blood. “Mr. Tracy!” they called. “Please, Mr. Tracy!” Piled high with leis, he would stop, sign, try to move on, stop again, sign again. “It looked hopeless,” reported the Star-Bulletin, which covered the arrival. “No man could sign all those notebooks. Tracy did his urbane best but the hunters grew.” It took a couple of traffic cops to clear the way so that the party, under the guidance of the local M-G-M rep, could get to a waiting car. They took off for the Royal Hawaiian, where they’d be staying for two weeks, maybe longer. Veteran waterfronters said he had drawn more autograph hounds than any passenger since Shirley Temple.
Fury was released nationally while the Tracys were on Oahu, opening at the Capitol Theatre in New York on June 5. Coming at the tag end of the 1935–36 season, it almost looked as if the film were being dumped, as Fritz Lang was fond of claiming. There was, however, very little in the way of competition, and Mayer, convinced it would die like a dog, had promised he would push it. Loew’s commandeered the electric sign running over the Astor Theatre, where The Great Ziegfeld was still drawing crowds, and pumped Fury in a big way.
William Boehnel of the World-Telegram devoted nearly half a page to the picture, the headline dubbing it “one of the most courageous in screen history.” Variety’s Abel Green thought it a “cinch critics’ picture” that would do well by word of mouth, a prediction confirmed by the Enquirer when it studied the trending at the Capitol box office and concluded that Fury was, in movie parlance, a “builder”—a film that was selling progressively more tickets as the week wore on. “Sylvia Sidney and Spencer Tracy until now have been players