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regardless of what it was, to just insist that he have six months or, if he had to, a year [off]—not just sometimes [when] he would have six months [off] but he would never know [when]. There might be three pictures come up, and he was always in the midst of something. If [we] could just leave and we could go someplace … I can remember we talked about [going] down in the West Indies, one of those places, and I felt that if he could just do that, just get away and really forget. [That if] he knew he wasn’t going to do a picture for, you know, a year maybe … and he did try to think about [it].

Tracy had just a week off between the finish of I Take This Woman and the start of Stanley and Livingstone, and his subsequent five-week vacation was more hurried than relaxing. He was idle seven weeks before the start of Northwest Passage, but there was tremendous uncertainty surrounding that project and endless rewrites. Seven weeks into production, only half the projected film was complete, and he was looking at a comparable period of time to finish the other half. Then they were talking of putting him directly into another picture or attempting to salvage the decidedly worthless Hedy Lamarr vehicle for yet a third time. On August 10, 1939, as the exterior scenes at Crown Point were being filmed, Tracy wired Leo Morrison instructing him, as per Louise’s suggestion, to arrange a six-month leave of absence or, barring that, to get him out of his M-G-M contract altogether.

He was in the studio tank matching river shots—the famed “human chain” sequence—when Frank Whitbeck advised him that word of his telegram had reached Eddie Mannix. He spent the next morning—August 24—in the tank again, then went home in the afternoon with a bad head cold. In a state of terrible fatigue he wrote Mannix directly:

Frank told me that you seemed upset because of my wire to Leo Morrison which, I understand, reached you secondhanded. I was just as much upset at feeling I had to wire Morrison, but you must realize that the stress of the moment and general conditions, coming together as they did, and the fact that I seemed out of touch with anyone at the studio may have had something to do with it. Anyway, I am sorry it happened because, whatever the problem, I certainly have no desire to hurt you.

The problem seems to be the culmination of many things, and it seems to me that the only thing to do is to get away for an indefinite period upon the completion of this picture. If I were ill physically, that would be the only thing I could do, and, as I certainly am mentally, it seems the only alternative which holds some hope. That may not solve it, but the fact remains that the problem is there and, at the moment, I am at a total loss as to just how to work it out.

At the outset, please believe that in no sense is there any quarrel with the studio or with anything they have done in my regard. I hope I appreciate that without Metro and the help I received here Heaven only knows where I would be now. Whatever arises out of this, I sincerely hope it will never be considered anything but a situation which must be worked out with complete good feeling between the studio and myself.

I am fully cognizant and appreciate to the utmost that the pictures I am given are the best pictures that the studio has to offer, and the parts, the best that any actor could hope for. It is just that I hope to prolong my value to the studio; to protect my health, both mental and physical, and to preserve whatever it is that I have as long as I can for my family.

I once promised Mr. Mayer and you, too, I think, that if the time ever came when I felt I should stop, I would tell you. It seemed to me that the time has come. Louise has gone through trying periods with me, and is going through probably the most trying now, and feels as I do.

I feel that perhaps, in the future, if an arrangement could be made whereby I could do a picture, then have a definite vacation period, the mental stress I subject myself to, or inflict upon myself, during the making of a