Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [239]
Have you ever been so discouraged that you contemplated abandoning your career? If so, when?
“Yes. About fifteen minutes ago. Just after the last scene.”
What do you consider the most useless sport or pastime?
“Staying awake.”
What is your favorite book?
“Steinbeck’s Red Pony.”
Your favorite flower?
“A rose … aw, I don’t know. Put down anything. What the hell’s the difference?”
Sheilah Graham came upon him one day as he was handing a one-hundred-dollar check to Woody Van Dyke. “It’s a bet I had,” he explained. “I bet Woody that I Take This Woman would never be released.” Quickly changing the subject, he mentioned The Yearling and Billy Grady’s nationwide search for a boy to play Jody. “Whoever he is,” said Tracy, “he’s a star already. The part is so surefire that the boy should be put under contract for five years right away—without waiting for the picture to be completed. Three or four years ago, Mickey Rooney would have been fine for the part, but I can’t see him cuddling a fawn now … not unless Fawn was the name of a girl.”
The studio pulled a sneak preview of Northwest Passage in New Rochelle (five hundred cards, Tracy noted) but was unable to get the picture into theaters until February 1940, as the demand for prints of Gone With the Wind was taxing the capacity of Technicolor’s processing plant. After seeing it, author Kenneth Roberts discharged his agent, but the preview notice in Daily Variety was wildly favorable, describing it as “the kind of stuff male audiences look for but seldom find. Very little romance. A few flashes only of a few women. No lovemaking. No dalliance. No man-woman emotional problems. Tough, hard stuff in the morning of America, during the French-Indian War, when frontiersmen now known as patriots had to be about their bloody chores in settling the right of sovereignty over a continent.”
When Metro finally did release the picture (“as one would release a wounded duck,” Roberts suggested) it was warmly welcomed by both the public and the critics, some of whom considered it worthy of a place alongside Selznick’s masterpiece as one of the signal achievements of the talking screen. The world premiere in Boise predated its New York opening by several weeks, and anticipation began to build as a national ad campaign revved an otherwise lethargic market. Northwest Passage opened big at the Capitol Theatre, where it remained through Holy Week, eventually posting worldwide rentals in excess of $3 million. Coming hard on the humiliation of I Take This Woman—which was a critical as well as commercial disaster—it was good news for Tracy, who hadn’t had a hit for his home studio in eighteen months.
With Edison in the can, he drove to Palm Springs for a long weekend at La Quinta and was introduced by Tim Whelan to Greta Garbo. “It would be a pleasure, Mr. Tracy, to play in one of your pictures sometime,” Garbo said to him. “And I would be delighted to play even a butler in one of your films, Miss Garbo,” he responded. Garbo had been contemplating a biography of Marie Curie, the Polish scientist and discoverer of radium, for a couple of years, and Tracy’s participation would ease the concerns of Eve Curie, youngest daughter of the title character, who feared the casting of Garbo as her mother would overshadow the equally important work of her father, Pierre. But with Boom Town looming, it would take the unlikely postponement of The Yearling to make it happen.
Tracy spent his fortieth birthday golfing with Eddie Mannix and producer-director Victor Saville, newly arrived from England. Three days later he started Boom Town, a big, brawling tale of Texas wildcatters originally purchased for Gable, Tracy, and Myrna Loy in the heady days following the release of Test Pilot. Tracy had no objection to doing the picture, and despite the tensions between them on Test Pilot, he and Gable maintained a genuine affection for one another. “They spent half their time, each one trying to understand the other,” Adela Rogers St. Johns said. “Gable looked at Tracy as the greatest actor in the