Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [202]
The source material, a manuscript titled Wings of Tomorrow, was by Frank “Spig” Wead, a former test pilot for the U.S. Navy who turned to writing after a freak accident left him confined to a wheelchair. A Wead story had been the basis of Hell Divers for M-G-M, and Ceiling Zero, based upon Wead’s book and play of the same title, had been a hit the previous season for Warner Bros. A studio reader thought Wings of Tomorrow had “everything that Ceiling Zero had as a play and a lot more besides…The characters are excellent, the dialogue fine, the whole thing top-notch.” It was, the report concluded, “suitable for Spencer Tracy.”
The reason Gable said he resisted the picture was that he didn’t understand “what the story was getting at,” a complaint echoed by Myrna Loy. As the movie took shape, it was Fleming’s enthusiasm that held the project together. Gable’s reticence may also have come from the shifting balance between his character, Lane, the test pilot, and Tracy’s, the no-nonsense mechanic, and the unthinkable possibility that Tracy could somehow end up with the girl. Originally, the property had been assigned to Lucian Hubbard, whose production of Wings won the first Academy Award for Best Picture. Hubbard put Bertram Millhauser on the script, but when he left to rejoin Paramount in the spring of 1937, the property passed to Bud Lighton, who worked out a whole new version of the story with John Lee Mahin. Fleming, one of Hollywood’s more prominent amateur pilots, became the obvious choice to direct. In the months following, the screenplay passed from Mahin to Vincent Lawrence, then Waldemar Young, and then to Wead himself.
Filming commenced on December 7, coincidentally the same day the results of the poll Ed Sullivan had mentioned were announced by the Chicago Tribune-News Syndicate. Conducted by fifty-five metropolitan newspapers, the survey of more than 20 million was to determine the “King” and “Queen” of Hollywood for the year 1937. On that day, Sullivan officially proclaimed Clark Gable and Myrna Loy the winners. Gable, with 22,017 reader votes, outdistanced Robert Taylor, Tyrone Power, William Powell, Nelson Eddy, and Tracy, who came in sixth with 11,253 votes. Similarly, Loy outpolled Loretta Young, Jeanette MacDonald, Barbara Stanwyck, Sonja Henie, and Shirley Temple to take her title.
Gable, seemingly unaware of the promotion, “smelled a publicity stunt” when a delegation appeared on the set. “Anyway, they gave Myrna and me big plush crowns about a foot high, and they wanted to take pictures of us in them. I had visions of these big ears sticking out from under that crown. I backed away. So what did Tracy do? He used that as his cue to try every conceivable way to get that crown on me.”
The following morning, Tracy had the entire crew lined up as Gable walked onto the stage. At Tracy’s cue, the electricians and grips broke into a chorus: “Here comes the bee-yootiful king! All hail! All hail!” Gable, whom Tracy normally called “Moose,” took the ribbing good-naturedly enough, then he joined in with more of the same when Loy appeared moments later. Tracy laid it on so thick that Gable and Loy approached a joint appearance on Good News with a considerable amount of dread. “That broadcast tonight will be a photographers’ clambake,” Tracy said. “And you two are going to look very comical when those newspaper photographers start telling you to wear the crown over your right ear and then your left ear …” Loy came close to canceling out altogether before she learned they wouldn’t be required to pose in the crowns, as neither she nor Gable wanted Tracy to get his hands on those pictures.
“After our would-be coronation,” Loy said, “Spence would hail Clark as ‘Your Majesty’; Clark would call Spence a Wisconsin ham, and Spence would counter with, ‘What about Parnell?’ ” (Ironically, Parnell, the story of the great Irish nationalist leader, had originally