Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [197]
After a rough first week, the mood on the set of Big City lightened, and when Borzage kept at a tense scene all morning and well past noontime, shooting it “up, down, and around,” Tracy said to him pointedly: “How about LUNCH, Mr. Lang?” Borzage smiled wanly, ordered one final take, then dismissed the company, Tracy making off to the commissary with a visiting journalist. “It isn’t worth it,” he moaned, clearly beat from roiling the same emotional energy over and over. “None of this is. Oh, I have no kick coming. The money is fine and I like it out here. But making pictures is a terrible tax on your health, and nothing is worth that.” Watching his weight, Tracy ordered cottage cheese and matzos for lunch, then added lamb chops and ice cream when the waitress said, “Is that all you’re going to have?”
Tracy and Luise Rainer listen as director Frank Borzage explains a scene on the set of Big City, 1937. (SUSIE TRACY)
By the time Sidney Skolsky watched a scene being made toward the end of production, he could truthfully report to his readers that Tracy and Luise Rainer were enjoying themselves. Rainer’s technique—if one could call it that—was not unlike Tracy’s own. “I never acted,” she said. “I felt everything.” And she eschewed makeup, as much, at least, as an actress at M-G-M would be allowed. Tracy told Elizabeth Yeaman he thought Helen Hayes the screen’s finest actress, but quickly added that he also admired Sylvia Sidney, Beulah Bondi, and Rainer, who, with her big soulful eyes and her self-done hair, projected a waiflike quality unique among his leading ladies.
Indeed, whatever success Big City achieved as a film was due in large part to the brittle chemistry that developed between its two unlikely stars, both of whom, at least initially, would have preferred doing something else entirely. Said screenwriter Dore Schary, who had once shared the stage with Tracy as a minor actor in The Last Mile, “Those of us working on the film had a marvelous time—a happy time—but while the trade reviews were good, the picture simply didn’t work. Perhaps Sam Goldwyn in his infinite wisdom was right when he said, ‘A happy set means a lousy picture.’ ”
On June 26, 1937, a week after Louise’s release from the hospital, she and the kids sailed for Hawaii. Spence was in the midst of Big City, working most days, and urged them to go on without him. In Hawaii, Louise took the children to see Captains Courageous; Johnny had already seen it, but this would be Susie’s first time watching her dad on screen. The accent and the curly hair didn’t fool her, and when it came time for him to slide away, Freddie calling after him, she was agape. “I just sat staring at the screen in disbelief,” she said. “I was stunned, and Mother said, ‘No, no, Daddy’s fine. He’s at home.’ In retrospect, I think I was probably too young to see it, and I have trouble watching that scene to this day.”
Tracy took a suite at the Beverly Wilshire for the balance of the shoot. They finished Big City late on the evening of July 27 and he left the hotel the following morning, spending his next few days aboard the Carrie B. He was struggling with the boat, anxious to keep it and yet increasingly unable to justify the expense for what were largely weekend getaways. He was bringing home $1,734.25 a week, but was still supporting his polo habit and a small stable of racehorses, the most prominent of which, April Lass, had finished in the money her very first start. Louise and the kids got back on August 7, and she and Spence went out to Riviera that same afternoon, playing five chukkers together, the first time either had been on a horse in over a month. The next day, Spence recorded his worst game ever, Walter Ruben, picture executive Ken Fitzpatrick, and Walt Disney all having played “horribly.” His time on the boat had obviously taken its toll, and he made