Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [277]
The next two weeks passed in something of a blur. Studio records show that he spent four days in the exclusive Harkness Pavilion of Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, admitted under the fanciful name of Bernhardt (as in Sarah) and accompanied by Hepburn, who took her own private room nearby. Broadway columnist Dorothy Kilgallen caught wind of the arrangement and, completely unhindered by Howard Strickling’s legendary control of the West Coast media, printed the first public intimation of the Tracy-Hepburn relationship in her column of March 13, 1942. Howard Dietz, Metro’s New York–based director of advertising and publicity, made little secret of his dislike for Tracy and considered him to be Culver City’s problem when he wasn’t in town on official business. “Tracy,” said Dietz, “had the mistaken idea that a movie star can have the freedom of the city and the right to put it into practice. He had no idea how to handle people, and he drank at an unpredictable rhythm.”
Kate had never before witnessed Tracy under the influence of alcohol and had no idea of the depths to which his binges could take him. She stayed with him as long as she possibly could, but when she left town with the company of Without Love, there was nothing to prevent him from falling back onto the sauce. Tortilla Flat had been put before a preview audience in Los Angeles, and he was needed back in California for retakes. He had remained friends with Myrna Loy, and although they hadn’t worked together since Test Pilot, the studio occasionally presumed upon that, thinking that she could somehow handle him when he gave them extraordinary trouble.
“We both happened to be in New York,” Loy remembered,
when Benny Thau called from Hollywood: “Myrna, we’re waiting to start Tracy’s picture, and he’s there on a bender, holed up at the River House with his male nurse. See what you can do?” I called; Spence asked, “Where are you?” and I told him. I shouldn’t have. He was at the door of my St. Regis suite in no time. Days of drinking had left him belligerent. He made his usual play for me, bringing his fist down with such emphatic frustration at one point that he smashed a glass-topped coffee table. Then he turned defensive. “You don’t have to worry about me anymore,” he said like a sulky child. “I’ve found the woman I want.” As he outlined the virtues of Katharine Hepburn, I was relieved, but also a bit disappointed. As selfish as it sounds, I liked having a man like Spence in the background wanting me. It’s rather nice when nothing’s required in return.
Without Love had its first performance in Princeton on March 4, 1942, and the reaction was nowhere near what they had hoped it would be. Tracy didn’t go but attempted a boozy call to eighty-six-year-old Sister Mary Perpetua instead, possibly to tell her that in the wake of his mother’s death he was taking steps to amend his birth certificate and that his middle name would soon, at long last, reflect his baptismal name, Bonaventure, in place of Bernard. His datebook entry for March 6 read, “Back on wagon” but then those words were crossed out.
“Apparently they just couldn’t handle him in the New York office,” said Eddie Lawrence, who came to town on unrelated business and was pressed into service. “They were exhausted. So I went over to the hotel. They greeted me like a long lost friend. And they were just bringing him out. They were cutting him down, a little bit of brandy or whatever they do. I was hungry—I hadn’t eaten anything—and I said, ‘Spencer, I’m going to eat something.’ So we talked. There were two doctors there, and I think they were giving him some form of medication, because the stomach obviously [couldn’t hold anything].”3
On March 11, while Hepburn was playing a week’s stand in Baltimore, Tracy was placed on a United Airlines flight