Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [180]
Eddie Mannix took a proprietary interest in Tracy’s career, and it may well have been his idea, being a lifelong Catholic, to cast Tracy in the role of the priest in San Francisco. Certainly it was the most surprising bit of casting in a film for which casting was a big—if not the biggest—selling point. As the film’s release date approached, the mechanism designed to exploit a major picture went into overdrive. On the East Coast, Howard Dietz, general director of publicity, worked out the selling angles, the principal one being the first-ever pairing of Clark Gable and Jeanette MacDonald. The line “They were born to fall in love!” appeared in ads and on posters, targeting the female trade. The title itself suggested the action of the earthquake and the bawdy ways of the old Barbary Coast. And then there was Tracy’s presence and the obvious chemistry with Gable. (“It’s News When Spencer Tracy, Screen’s ‘Toughest Guy,’ Enacts a Priest!” declared a headline in the film’s hefty pressbook.) By design, the picture was a marketer’s dream.
After John Hoffman’s ministrations put the earthquake right, there were at least two “sneak” (i.e., unannounced) previews of San Francisco to gauge unbiased audience reactions and fix a number of small problems—laugh lines that weren’t properly covered, dull spots to be excised. By the time of the official or so-called press preview on June 22 at the Fox Village Theatre, all the tinkering was done. There was a roped-off section in the center of the auditorium to which executives, directors, players, technicians, agents, secretaries, and their various guests fled after braving the gauntlet of autograph hounds and lobby lizards typically drawn to such events. Members of the working press surrounded the premium seats, as did claques of studio employees carefully interlarded with excited members of the general public.
At the appointed time, a booming voice announced the evening’s “surprise” and a roar of applause went up as the showing began and the studio loyalists made sure the clapping continued until every significant name had rolled across the screen. Applause also greeted the principal members of the cast as they made their first appearances—Gable, MacDonald, Tracy, Jack Holt, Ted Heeley, and the others. MacDonald’s rousing song, “San Francisco,” was a sensation, and the magnitude 7.8 temblor at the top of the tenth reel handed the crowd a split second of genuine panic. Elizabeth Yeaman, covering the event for the Hollywood Citizen News, “peered frantically at the ceiling of the theater and endeavored to restrain an impulse to bolt for an exit.” A few spectators actually got to their feet.
The conventions of the press preview were meant to bolster weak pictures and eke better notices out of reviewers who couldn’t tell the difference between an ovation and a calculated hullabaloo. But San Francisco didn’t need the help, and the local trades—the most jaded and the first to publish—described “burst after burst” of spontaneous applause for the spectacle, the music, the sheer excellence of the production. Neither Gable nor MacDonald had ever been better, and Tracy surprised and delighted everyone as the humble young priest. The effects were “amazing,” far and away the best ever. The movie delivered on every conceivable level, and the cards in the foyer (“How did you like the picture?”) were merely a formality; Hyman and his people had no intention of changing a frame.
Conferring with his brother Carroll on the set of San Francisco. (PATRICIA MAHON COLLECTION)
Some three hundred release prints were struck at a cost of approximately $140 a copy.