Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [213]
Tracy, accompanied by Carroll and his stand-in, Jerry Schumacher, was welcomed by Father Flanagan and Omaha mayor Dan Butler, who presented both him and Mickey Rooney with floral keys to the city. The formalities over, Spence gamely made his way to a waiting cab, enduring another mob scene at the Fontenelle Hotel. “The lobby was crammed with people who claimed to be relatives of Mickey Rooney,” reported the Lincoln Sunday Journal and Star, “or to have gone to school with Spencer Tracy.”
Taurog spent all day Sunday scouting locations on the Boys Town campus. Monday morning, the first shots were made just after nine, a shrill whistle signaling quiet, gold foil reflectors augmenting a battery of booster lamps in the already sweltering heat. Tracy, sunburned from Hawaii, needed only a little lotion to take the shine off, a little graying at the temples his only makeup. Mintz, in Dubonnet shirt and white jacket, pipe in hand, studied each scene from the sidelines, looking for bits of business to inject, as Taurog, in helmet and brown pants, sat motionless next to the camera. By noon the temperature had hit 105 degrees and only dipped below 100 after nightfall.
Directing his first film under a new M-G-M contract, Taurog proved equal to his reputation as a skilled handler of children. Still, all the young principals in Boys Town were professional actors, and nothing a director could say would match the primal impact of playing opposite a man of Tracy’s gifts, looking into his eyes and establishing a connection.
“He was artless,” said Gene Reynolds, who played the handicapped Tony Ponessa in the picture. “You never caught him acting. He was very facile. He would take in what you gave him, process it, and give it back.” Sidney Miller, the bookish Mo Kahn, thought Tracy the best listener in the world: “When I did a scene in Boys Town, I swear those eyes bore into mine.” Tracy, he recalled, was once asked by the cameraman to cheat his look to Miller’s right ear. “He refused. He wouldn’t look away from my eyes. If they wanted his full face, they were going to have to bring the camera around.”
Most prominent among the kids was seven-year-old Bobs Watson, who played the diminutive Pee Wee. “In one of the first scenes,” he remembered,
I come in and ask for candy, and they establish that I get it. In the next scene when I come in for candy, he gives me some and asks, “Have you brushed your teeth?” I hadn’t brushed my teeth and I lie about it and say, “I lost my toothbrush.” “Lost it? Well, we’re going to have to do something about this” and he makes a big deal about it, which plays on my guilt. So I start to put the candy back. Just before we shoot the scene, Norman Taurog, the director, said, “Bobby, now when you’re putting the candy back, don’t look at it. Reach in your pocket, take it out, and look Uncle Spencer right in the eyes.” And I’ll never forget those eyes.
Watson’s great talent was his ability to cry like no other child in pictures, and Taurog never had to resort to the usual tricks—stories of dead dogs, dying grandparents, and the like. “I can’t explain it,” he once said, “but when tears were needed, I cried, and they were honest and real. In Boys Town, when Mickey Rooney left, it really broke my heart. I used to see Rooney and Spencer Tracy in a very idealized way.” Tracy, he remembered, was fatherly and warm. “Often, after a scene, he’d reach over and hug me and take me on his lap. I felt like a little puppy. I would follow along and stand close, hoping he’d call me over, and often he would. He’d say, ‘How’re you doing?’ and put his arm around me.”
Tracy and Rooney never really warmed to one another, despite press feeds to the contrary. “During lunch,” said one Boys Town alumnus, “Tracy comes in and then they serve him his food, and Mickey used to agitate him. They had this long table, so Mickey comes in [and sits] across from him and [takes] off his shoes and socks and put[s] them right up in front of the plate. Oh, Tracy, he was burning a hole through it.” Frank Whitbeck once confided