Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [186]
Tracy hated having his hair curled for Captains Courageous. Here he submits to M-G-M stylist Larry Germain, 1936. (MIKE GERMAIN)
Fleming wrote: “We had purposely set out in October in order to take advantage of the fog. But for days after we began to work, either the sun would break through or the wind would cause a break in the mist.” They cruised over to the Isthmus for a brief scene of dialogue with Bartholomew and Rooney, but then the fog broke there as well. “[A]ll the actors and crew were fishing off the back of the boat,” Tracy remembered. “Fleming said, ‘Goddamnit, we’re going home!’ And then we went back to Catalina to get the stuff we had left in the hotel, and Fleming was in such a hurry to get away that he was using a speedboat [while] the rest of us were going to use a big tug. He walked out on the pier to jump into his speedboat, and the speedboat took off and he went into the water—with his white [pants], all dressed up.” The We’re Here and the Cushman proceeded to Santa Monica to await further orders.
There was process work to be done, but Tracy’s scenes were limited to Harvey’s time on the water, and the other material—the boy’s school days and his life at home—could go on without him. He spent all day at Riviera on October 4, practicing in the morning and watching a game in the afternoon. Then he attended the riotous preview of Libeled Lady in the evening. It was, he liked to tell people, the first picture he had ever had to dress up for, preferring, of course, to “slop around” in his shirtsleeves, uncreased trousers, and an old pair of shoes. As he watched the breakneck comedy unspool, he said he couldn’t get over the feeling that he was watching a man “who had just put on a clean shirt.” When it was over, he turned to Louise and asked her what she thought of his wardrobe. “Well,” she allowed, “they did look pretty new.”
However much the picture made Tracy’s neck itch, Libeled Lady went over big with the press, and the reviews the next day were, in Tracy’s estimation, “great.” Confident he was in “the best comedy of the year,” he touched M-G-M for a $5,000 loan and went off again looking for a boat. He inspected Johnny Weismuller’s at Santa Monica and took a demo trip in heavy seas on one named, appropriately enough, Fury. The studio took up his option a full six months early, and within a week he had closed on a forty-foot gaff-headed ketch called Resolute. Following the example of Frank Borzage, who named his yacht the Rena B. after his wife, Tracy christened the boat the Carrie B in honor of his mother.
He was back at the studio on October 21, still unsure of his performance and grumbling as they fussed with his hair. (“It took me two hours every blessed day to get my hair curled.”) The screenwriters, principally John Lee Mahin, who did the final draft of the script with the knowledge that Tracy would be playing the part, kept Manuel’s words in the spirit of those Kipling had given the character, accomplishing the effect with syntax and emphasis. (“Ah ha!” said Manuel, holding out a brown hand. “You are some pretty well now? This time last night the fish they fish for you. Now you fish for fish. Eh, wha-at?”)
Said Tracy: “We got an educated Portuguese to advise us.3 He told me that if you put an Italian, a Spaniard, and a Portuguese in the same room and listen to them talk with your eyes closed, you can’t tell which is the Portuguese, which is the Italian, and which is the Spaniard. So I sort of made up my accent as I went along. Maybe some of it was phony. I don’t know.”
What became his favorite scene in the picture was also its simplest, Manuel out singing under the stars, Harvey tentatively making his approach. Tired of Harvey’s attitude, Manuel wishes he would go away and continues to sing and play his vielle as the boy peppers him with questions.
“What do you keep singing for?” Harvey demands.
“Because I like to sing,” Manuel says.
“I never heard that song before.”
“Me neither.