Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [246]
Tracy elaborated:
I had always been fascinated by the story and saw it as a story of the two sides of a man. I felt Jekyll was a very respectable doctor—a fine member of society. He had proposed to a lovely girl and was about to marry her. But there was another side to the man. Every once in a while, Jekyll would go on a trip. Disappear. And either because of drink or dope or who-knows-what, he would become—or should I say turn into?—Mr. Hyde. Then in a town or neighborhood where he was totally unknown, he would perform incredible acts of cruelty and vulgarity. The emotional side of Jekyll was obviously extremely disturbed. The girl, as his fiancée, is a proper lady. But as his fantasy whore, the girl matched his Mr. Hyde. She would be capable of the lowest behavior. The two girls would be played by the same actress; the two men would be me.
Tracy had the idea of doing the transformations from Jekyll to Hyde entirely without makeup, as he remembered Barrymore having done them in 1920: “The change was not essentially physical. It went deeper than that. It was his soul that turned black. As a matter of fact, Mr. Hyde would have been better able to carry out his diabolical crimes had he been handsome, suave, polished. Not only that, but a handsome Mr. Hyde would have been more believable and the contrast between his appearance and personality more interesting.”
On December 16, he dined with Saville, Fleming, and Mahin, and they ran the silent Jekyll and Hyde. Barrymore, they discovered, did the transformation in one shot but, once established as having changed to Mr. Hyde, relied on makeup to put across the effect. The look was in some respects subtle and in other ways outlandish, with putty fingers extending the hands and a phony chin accentuating the actor’s scarecrow frame. The results inconclusive, the men decided to make a test to see if a strictly cerebral version of the story was even possible. Meanwhile, with Mahin’s completed script in the bank, Saville turned to journalist and playwright John L. Balderston, whose name had been associated with some of Hollywood’s most prominent horror pictures, including Dracula and Frankenstein. Balderston reviewed Mahin’s work and began framing the problem by setting forth the dual nature of man and Plato’s metaphor of the soul as a charioteer driving two horses—the good horse and the bad horse.
On December 23, Tracy, who had just finished with the Boys Town sequel, shot a test of the initial transformation scene as written by Mahin. The following day, Christmas Eve, he screened the test and sadly pronounced it “no good.” Said Mahin, “They made tests without makeup, but he couldn’t bring it off, he couldn’t contort his face enough.” Fleming thought they’d have another go after the first of the year, but Tracy’s enthusiasm for the part evaporated. Convinced he could never pull the thing off and would simply make a fool of himself, he started maneuvering to get out of the commitment. Fleming kept him on board, certain they were onto something extraordinary, but Tracy remained unhappy for the balance of the project.
During his time as director of Gone With the Wind, Fleming had been the object of a campaign by David Selznick to interest him in a new contract player, the Swedish import Ingrid Bergman. Selznick made sure that Fleming saw