Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [223]
Toward the end of production, Hedy Lamarr, newly married to Fox writer-producer Gene Markey, visited the set, hailing him as “Spennzer” and standing in for actress Nancy Kelly for a shot where Stanley is standing on the deck of an East Indian steamship and looking down at the character of Eve Kingsley. Only the week earlier, Tracy had told Sheilah Graham that Lamarr was “in a spot” with the shelving of I Take This Woman. “Do you realize,” he said, “it will be six months at least before the public sees Hedy in a picture? That makes a year off the screen for an actress who has made only one picture. Her next picture must be good—and don’t think Hedy doesn’t know it.”
He did a Lux broadcast the night of March 27, then boarded a train for Sun Valley, Idaho, to shoot the Wyoming Territory sequence that opens the picture. He worked all day on the twenty-ninth, leaving for home at 11:00 p.m. and arriving back in Los Angeles on the morning of March 31. He had time for tennis with Louise and a swim in the pool before reporting back to the Fox lot. He celebrated his birthday the following week with tennis, seven periods of polo, and dinner at home with Louise and the kids. He was thirty-nine years old and, as he told his family and friends, he was beginning to feel it.
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1 Pat O’Brien’s performance as Father Jerry Connolly, a character clearly patterned after Father Tim, didn’t come until the release of Warners’ Angels With Dirty Faces in November 1938.
2 Officially, Tracy’s participation in Stanley and Livingstone was entirely separate from the deal for Power and was apparently based on Tracy’s personal conviction that he did indeed owe Fox another picture.
3 There was no panting in the take that was used, just the weary realization on Stanley’s part that after nine months on the African continent his quest has finally paid off. “Dr. Livingstone,” he says with growing certainty as the figure approaches, adding the “I presume” as an afterthought.
CHAPTER 15
A Buoyant Effect on the Audience
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Tracy saw Stanley and Livingstone in a studio projection room on April 11, 1939, and thought it only fair. “Might be entertaining, not great,” he wrote in his book. “Predict fair bus[iness], fair reviews. Just so-so.” He left the next day for another try at the European vacation that had gone so disastrously awry the previous year. Frank Whitbeck accompanied him as far as Omaha, where a meeting had been scheduled with Father Flanagan and Bishop Ryan to discuss the possibility of a sequel to Boys Town.
Tracy wasn’t keen on the idea, but he felt a profound sense of responsibility toward Father Flanagan and the young citizenry that had embraced him so fervently. The studio cleared a profit of more than $2 million on the picture, yet the institution itself had seen only $5,000 in rights money. Also, the tidal wave of donations Flanagan expected after the film’s release failed to materialize, and contributions, in fact, dropped sharply, supporters assuming that Boys Town was suddenly flush with cash. Perversely, the only thing the movie succeeded in boosting was the number of applicants for admission, most of whom had to be turned away. “Next time I come to Hollywood,” Flanagan told the New York Times, “I’m going to get myself an agent.”
Tracy arrived in New York on April 16 and spent the week playing tennis, taking long walks around the city, and seeing shows. As always, he delighted in the big musicals—the Noël Coward revue Set to Music, Olsen and Johnson’s Hellzapoppin’, Jimmy Durante and Ethel Merman in Stars in Your Eyes. He dined one night