Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [254]
Fortunately for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the public didn’t care what the critics thought, and the picture opened strong, the first Tracy picture to play the upscale Astor since Captains Courageous. Nicholas Schenck wired the ranch:
WE ARE DOING THE BIGGEST BUSINESS OF ANY FILM THAT EVER PLAYED THE ASTOR. THIS INCLUDES “GONE WITH THE WIND,” “PYGMALION” AND “GOODBYE MR. CHIPS.” ALSO TODAY’S BUSINESS WHICH TOOK PLACE AFTER THE NOTICES IS BIGGER THAN YESTERDAYS WHICH WAS IN ADVANCE OF THE NOTICES PROVING THAT WE ARE A SUCCESS … THE PEOPLE THAT WE HAVE QUERIED COMING OUT OF THE THEATRE UNIFORMLY SAY THE PICTURE AND YOUR PERFORMANCE ARE EXCELLENT.
Rain and cooler weather made the film strictly SRO at most performances, and it held to its remarkable pace in its second and third weeks as well. The studio, however, knew it had to do something about the laughs the picture drew, and Tracy’s datebook entry for August 15 reads as follows: “Studio cutting ‘Jekyll & Hyde’—but not en[ough]!” He was still holed up at the studio on the eighteenth (“Hydeing” as he put it) and the editing wasn’t completed until the night of the twenty-first, the improvements still nevertheless in time for the critical Labor Day weekend, the traditional start of the new season.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde went on to broader critical acclaim elsewhere and worldwide billings in excess of $2 million. Tracy, however, could never reconcile the film’s success with the critical roundhousing he endured in New York. Perversely, he took to quoting the Abbott and Costello line whenever the subject of the film came up, erroneously attributing it to Cecelia Ager.
Dick Mook told him that he didn’t seem himself at all, that since winning the Oscars he was only preoccupied with topping his own performances. Tracy didn’t agree with that, but he took a moment to formulate a response.
“It wasn’t the awards,” he said finally. “Naturally I was flattered, but when I stop to think of some of the others who’ve received the awards, I don’t take them too seriously. Perhaps I do worry over my work, but it isn’t for fear I won’t get another award. It’s because I’m bothered about the poor parts I’m getting … I guess maybe I’m near the end of my rope. I’ve been in pictures almost twelve years now, and I’m not a juvenile anymore. Well, it was fun while it lasted and neither the stage, nor pictures, nor Hollywood owes me a thing. In fact, they’ve all been mighty good to me.”
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1 Tracy’s title, for which he was awarded fifty dollars.
2 Contrary to legend, Tracy’s M-G-M contract never called for top billing.
3 Fleming had been so impressed with the continuity sketches of William Cameron Menzies on Gone With the Wind that he had key sequences for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde designed in the same manner. For The Yearling, he had the entire screenplay sketched in advance.
CHAPTER 17
Woman of the Year
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I’m afraid you’re going to have trouble finding anything to photograph,” Louise Tracy told the photographer accompanying Dick Mook. “You see, we wanted a house that would be a home—a place that would be comfortable to live in rather than one that would look well in pictures but which would be depressingly formal. As a matter of fact, we have hardly any