Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [189]
“You can’t live up to an idealistic role,” Tracy said. “I’m not competent to advise anyone about their spiritual problems. I’m groping myself. I suppose we all are.” After he played a young doctor in a radio adaptation of Men in White, an influx of letters came from broken and discouraged medical students who said they had drawn new hope and inspiration from his performance. Again, some asked for advice: “They made me feel pretty helpless. It’s no simple thing to advise an earnest youngster who is confused about life. You can’t ignore them, either. About all I can do is tell them to keep on trying. It’s trite, of course, but at least I believe it myself.” Then, of course, there were the usual crackpots that all celebrities hear from—inventors, hustlers, people looking for loans or investment dollars. A few, written in honest desperation, got his attention.
“I think of you many, many times, always look forward to your letters,” he wrote Lincoln Cromwell, now in his fourth year at McGill,
but I have been so busy the past year, myself, that I haven’t found much time for correspondence. Now I have a very fine secretary, so we hope things will be different … You have done beautifully, and I’m proud of you, and I want you to go on. Helping you has been a great source of pleasure and satisfaction, and I’m perfectly willing, even anxious, to have you continue in study for another year or two. How you choose to do this will be left practically to your own judgment. I have even thought of Europe for a year, if you feel that anything could be gained and your service to humanity enhanced by study there. I am anxious to see you this summer, when we will talk all these things over. May I tell you, Lincoln, the past year has been wonderful for me, too. It has been the best year that I have ever had in my work, besides being by far the best physically and mentally. We have a lovely farm in [the Valley], and Mrs. Tracy and the children are all well and happy. I have also a nice 40-foot sailboat which has given me a lot of pleasure, and I hope that this summer you and I can have a little cruise in it together. Enclosed please find [a] check, which I’m sure you can use.
Vic Fleming was ill, in the hospital for kidney stones, and Captains Courageous was on hold pending his recovery. Tracy went to the races, painted the barn, gave interviews focusing on the hard times he had seen before joining Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. “As everyone knows, no actor is any better than his last picture,” he said in a by-lined article for the Oakland Tribune. “And it isn’t reasonable to expect that every one of your pictures is going to be a smash hit. You may get two in a row or even three, or you may hit a jackpot consisting of Fury, San Francisco, Libeled Lady, and Captains Courageous, but not often.”
He gave the studio full credit for salvaging his career (“I was well on my way to being a tough heavy for keeps”) and he gave Louise credit for his sobriety. “The fact that I’m alive today, that I’m capable of any work or success—I owe to her. She’s the most wonderful person I’ve ever known.”
Fleming’s two-day stint in the hospital stretched to three weeks, and filming resumed with Jack Conway at the helm. The production was plagued by illness: John Lee Mahin, Barrymore, Charley Grapewin all came down with the flu. Then Tracy, during a routine checkup, was told he had a goiter. He had noticed his thyroid gland was “a bit swollen”; although it wasn’t toxic, he was told that it could, in time, obstruct his breathing. Dr. Dennis thought he should have it out “sometime.” Tracy was just out of the hospital—more tests—when he learned that he had been nominated for an Academy Award.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was at a low ebb in 1936, so many