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the woman, with Tracy relegated to a supporting role. The result was a complete mismatch on the part of the two principals, their lack of screen chemistry exacerbated by a story in which Crawford’s fiercely straight-arrow character eventually marries—but does not love—Tracy’s. At thirty-two, Crawford was too old for the part of Jessie Cassidy, late of Hester Street, and, the carefully diffused lighting of George Folsey notwithstanding, looked it. Seemingly aware of all this, Borzage produced a remarkably static motion picture, long on dialogue and good looks, short on the kind of action that had come to distinguish Tracy’s better work on the screen. The only real surprise about Mannequin was that its two stars got on as well as they did.

Tracy went back into the studio a little sheepishly, having effectively delayed the start of Mannequin. He saw Borzage and Joan Crawford and had a long talk with Eddie Mannix, who, he noted, was “wonderful” about it. Norma Shearer asked him to make a test for the role of King Louis XVI in Marie Antoinette, a flattering proposition that would mark his first time in period costume. He met with director Sidney Franklin and saw the tests of other actors vying for the part. Saturday was spent rehearsing with Crawford in the morning, Shearer in the afternoon. The test was shot at night the following Thursday after a full day’s work. Tracy thought the result “no good” even though Shearer, much to his amazement, said that she liked it.

Mannequin finally got under way on September 14, and Tracy noted his weight at 176 1/4 in his datebook. He dug in again at the Beverly Wilshire and, at some point during the six weeks it took to shoot the picture, fell into an involvement with his costar, who had recently separated from actor Franchot Tone. Joan Crawford shared the signal quality of nearly all of Tracy’s women—availability. The affair, which apparently generated little, if any, emotional heat, extended beyond the picture, but not by very much. Crawford contracted pneumonia during production—or so she said—and stubbornly reported to work with a 102-degree temperature until her doctor intervened. Getting her back into shape took a few days, and Dr. William Branch whisked her out to the Uplifters Club on the pretext of getting some fresh air into her. She sat in the car, its doors locked, and watched as Dr. Branch and Tracy played polo. In time, she was stick-and-balling a bit, and after the picture wrapped, she and Spence spent a day posing for stills on horseback.

In later years Crawford appeared to be of two minds about Tracy. In her autobiography, published during his lifetime, she said it was “inspiring” to play opposite him, and in a public statement several years after his death, she called him “one of the most beautiful men” she’d ever known. “Pure male with a mixture of small boy attitudes which made him beguiling beyond belief.” Privately, though, she expressed real bitterness over Mannequin, contending that Tracy was so miscast “he made an absolute muddle out of my part, which wasn’t all that great to begin with.” She continued: “At first I felt honored working with Spence, and we even whooped it up a little bit off the set, but he turned out to be a real bastard. When he drank he was mean, and he drank all through production. He’d do cute things like step on my toes when we were doing a love scene—after he chewed on some garlic.”

Tracy, of course, was completely dry during the making of the film and for a considerable time thereafter. (His datebook entry for October 4: “1 month on the wagon instead of 21 months! Jackass!”) Crawford’s anger was surely over the fact that it was Tracy who ended the dalliance and not Crawford herself. Her obsessive-compulsive behavior and slavish devotion to the business of being a movie star would quickly have grated on him, and when the brief sexual infatuation had faded, he would have lost no time in distancing himself. A few months later, he reportedly came off at her while rehearsing “Anna Christie” for the Lux Radio Theatre. “For crissake, Joan, can