Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [272]
In him she saw a man as solid and admirable as her own father, warm and witty and full of unexpected observations. “They were the only two men in her life who really challenged her,” Katharine Houghton commented, “and she felt comforted by the boundaries they set for her. My grandfather was a more classically handsome man than Spencer, but they both exuded a vigorous and not-to-be-messed-with male energy.” The balance Tracy brought to her life was oddly liberating in that she could be as bossy and as much a pain in the ass as she pleased, and she knew that when she had gone too far, when she had provoked and jabbered and carried on past all reasonable tolerance, he would simply say, as no man had said to her before, “Kate, shut up!” It was an accommodation he taught her, one she had always sought from others but had never before given herself.
Hepburn was like Louise in that they were both athletic, both actresses of some attainment, both plainspoken in a world where directness didn’t always count as a virtue. But where Hepburn could be confrontational, Louise was not, and where Kate saw a man in need of love and maintenance, Louise saw a job she was no longer able to do. What remained of the marriage was trust, friendship, and a sense of shared experience that was well-nigh unbreakable, but it was no longer a thing that was sustainable or mutually nourishing. Spence had outlets—his career, women, his small circle of friends. Louise had Johnny, Susie, her book, and her horses. She had the world-famous Tracy name, but it wasn’t nearly enough for a woman of her drive and intellect.
The relationship with Katharine Hepburn contributed to a time of almost unprecedented turmoil for Spencer Tracy; not since 1933–34 had his life been so completely shaken by a sequence of events. He was already deeply involved with Hepburn—more than he had been with any woman since Loretta Young—when he made his only network appearance with Ingrid Bergman on the Lux Radio Theatre. Kate and he were doing retakes for Woman of the Year, and she was plainly jealous of the fact that he was seeing Bergman again, even in a strictly professional capacity. (“Kate never felt she was beautiful enough for him,” said Katharine Houghton.) Spence wasn’t himself that night, and Bergman later characterized the broadcast as a fiasco, noting that Tracy read his part “as though he was appearing at gunpoint.” Kay Brown went so far as to advise Bergman that she shouldn’t do radio anymore, and Selznick, who thought Bergman lost a lot of her appeal over the air, agreed.2
Filming concluded in a miasma of shock after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Tracy summarized events in his datebook: “Air raid warnings L.A. Enemy planes sighted over San Francisco. Japs gain big advantage: Bombed Manilla, captured Wake Island, Guam Island.” On Monday, December 8, President Roosevelt went before a joint session of Congress to call for a declaration of war against Japan. Three days later Adolf Hitler furiously declared war on the United States. Kate, committed to the new Philip Barry play, returned east to spend the holidays in Connecticut with her family, leaving Spence in California with Vic Fleming and the cast of Tortilla Flat. Johnny arrived home from school on the nineteenth, and Christmas was