Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [242]
“Of course not,” said Tracy. “That sort of thing gives us authentic information about a place, but realism, as I understand it, must be contributed by the actor, not by the camera.” Asked if he thought the drive for such “historical accuracy” was the result of showing audiences too many newsreels and travelogues, he said, “Of course. It’s a good thing too—in its place. We all like to see places as they really are or were. But a play is something else.” He thought a moment. “I’d go even farther. The portrayal of a character is not only separate from the background, or scenery. It may also be, to a certain extent, separate from the most notable accomplishments of the character. In portraying Edison, for example, it wasn’t enough to tell the audience what they already knew: that Edison invented his light bulb. Even when he wasn’t accomplishing anything, in the intervals between achievements, he must have been recognizable as a great man. I kept asking myself, ‘What was he like when he wasn’t inventing?’ ”
“That’s all very well for great men,” Erskine said, “but what about the lesser folk?”
“The same for them,” Tracy replied. “In Grapes of Wrath, for example, the characters are terms in a social and economic problem, but they are also human beings, and they would be individuals even if the problem didn’t exist.”
“But how can a character be portrayed as ‘great’ aside from what he does?”
“Well, sometimes a man is great because of what he refuses to do, and sometimes the character of a famous man is revealed in small things which his fame overshadows. In the Edison film, for instance, the inventor’s courage and persistence count for more than his success. To build up the real Edison, we tried to suggest those little ways of friendship, those instincts of loyalty and justice, which made the men in his laboratory devoted to him, and I had to indicate his qualities in his manner, in so far as I could, even when I was saying or doing nothing in particular.”
“Even so,” said Erskine, “how true to history were you? Did you give the real Edison?”
“My idea of Edison.”
“Then the portrait isn’t realistic?”
“Realism,” said Tracy, “is always someone’s idea of reality. It gets the name of ‘real’ when the audience agrees it is true. If I can’t convince the audience, then the portrait won’t seem real, no matter how true it is.”
The day he finished Boom Town, Tracy left by rail for Chicago and his first visit in eighteen years to the campus of Ripon College. Professor H. P. Boody had sought his return as early as 1927, and regularly thereafter. In 1936 there was talk of awarding Tracy an honorary degree, and in 1939 a movement to bring the premiere of Northwest Passage to Ripon drew the support of Wisconsin governor Julius Heil. On November 6, longtime Ripon president Silas Evans wrote Tracy at M-G-M, advising him the trustees wished to confer upon him “a form of doctor’s degree” appropriate to his achievements and trusting that he would “consider it an honor” to receive such a degree. Responding by wire, Tracy assured Dr. Evans that he would indeed appreciate the honor and could come after completion of the Edison picture “in about eight weeks” or, if he preferred, during commencement. “I shall arrange to be there if I have to fly and can stay only a day.”
There followed a flurry of proposals and counterproposals, first regarding Northwest Passage, later Edison, the Man, and the possibility that Tracy could stop at Ripon on his way home from New Jersey. Boom Town, now ten days behind schedule, intervened, and so the plan was shifted to commencement on June 10, 1940, with Edison having its Wisconsin premiere at the five-hundred-seat Campus Theatre. As Frank Whitbeck went on ahead to supervise arrangements, Tracy,