Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [279]
The show moved on to Cleveland, then to Pittsburgh, where Tracy was spotted in the opening night audience, furtively slouched in a rear seat. He told Karl Krug, drama critic for the Sun-Telegraph, that he had been in Washington and “just stopped off to see the show.” He denied that he was going to replace Elliott Nugent but said that he thought Barry’s play could “form the basis” of a good movie. His presence strengthened the suspicions of Kaspar Monahan, critic for the rival Pittsburgh Press, to whom he said much the same thing: “Mr. Tracy said he was going to leave immediately after the performance. But I noted at final curtain that he was not in too great a hurry to get out of town or to neglect to run backstage and congratulate Miss Hepburn.”
Tracy was, in fact, on his way to Baltimore for a general checkup at Johns Hopkins, the same distinguished institution where Tom Hepburn had studied medicine and met his future wife. Tracy had never before crossed the continent to see a doctor, much less take a battery of tests, but Kate had arranged the visit in the aftermath of his most recent bender. On the afternoon of May 12, he sat apologetically across from clinician Louis V. Hamman, having just given his name to a clueless admissions nurse as “Mr. Clark Gable.” He said he was sure there was nothing physically wrong with him, that he was just neurotic, and that it was not right for him to be wasting the doctor’s time.
“His symptoms,” Dr. Hamman said in his notes,
are of rather long standing, ten years at least. He is introspective and says he suffers from vague fear, fear of what he does not know. He adds that part of it, he supposes, is fear of disease. Five years ago he was advised to have the thyroid out. Either doctors told him or in some way he found out that occasionally an enlarged thyroid is carcinoma, and he at once decided that it would turn out to be cancer. He goes on to explain that there has been great solicitude on his part about his heart. When he gets nervous or excited, his heart races, throbs and pounds and skips beats. He insists there is something wrong with his heart, but his doctor says over and over again that there is nothing wrong. He sleeps poorly. Goes to bed early, wakes and reads a while, goes to sleep again and then wakes about five or six in the morning and gets up. He has been doing this for a long time. He now enjoys the early morning hours, likes to be out of doors or preparing for his work by reading plays, and so on.
Tracy went on to give a brief résumé of his schooling, his time at Ripon, and his early days on the stage.
He loves acting, puts his whole heart into it, and gives it all his energy and ability. He has never learned to play, cares only to fish and cannot do that for long. He will start off on a vacation intending to spend a month, and after three or four days will go back to Hollywood. Therefore, he has worked not only intensively but more or less continuously. As soon as he finishes one play he is off on another. He realizes that this makes a heavy demand upon his nervous energy because he puts a great deal of energy into everything he does, and I think he knows he pays for this in the symptoms that he has. About ten years ago, he started out on periodic alcoholic bouts. Up to that time he had drank very little. After a play he would begin to celebrate, and would keep it up for a week or ten days. These periods of drinking would come about every eight months. Six years ago, he decided that things could not go on that way, and for two years he did not drink anything. Then he fell and had another bout of drinking. After that he went for four years without drinking, and then was off on another bout some three months ago. He says the last bout was utter folly. He decided that, not having had any alcohol for four years, he could handle it, but found that it was impossible for him to do so.
The patient summarized his unremarkable medical and family histories, his height