Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [282]
Other than the original start date of production, Tracy recorded nothing in his datebook during the month of June 1942. He and Kath—the name he had taken to calling her in private—attended John Barrymore’s funeral on the second but otherwise kept a low profile. Louise, surely aware that something was up, wrote Matie Winston late in the month, saying that she thought she needed to do something—find a job, go back to the stage, get busy and contribute something to the war effort. Johnny and Susie were home for the summer, but there was the matter of Susie’s schooling to resolve, for gas rationing had made the commute to Brentwood impractical. Miss Winston, who once told Louise she thought she looked like Greer Garson, encouraged her to “[t]ake another flier while you are still so young and pretty. Send Susie to me. Hearing children work in beautifully here.”
Tracy never spoke of Keeper of the Flame, never said what he liked about it or what he didn’t. It was a good part for him in a picture that had something important to say, but he didn’t involve himself in the writing process the way Kate felt compelled to do. His part was solid, as tailored for him as any part he had ever played. The actor most at risk on the picture was Hepburn herself, and no one was likely to watch out for her the way that she was used to watching out for herself. Another incomplete script was submitted to the PCA in early July, and again Joseph I. Breen warned that “if it is to be indicated that Christine is guilty of her husband’s murder, she will have to be punished if the picture is to conform to the requirements of the Production Code.”
Still committed to a picture in which he passionately believed, Don Stewart found himself excluded from the story conferences Saville was now having almost daily. “I shall not resign,” he vowed, “as long as there is a chance to save the ‘message’ (not my face). Is it not humiliating that all the discussion now takes place without my being allowed to participate …?” He returned to his farm in the Adirondacks after completing the screenplay, and when filming began on July 14, Christine was guilty of murder in the first degree. Hepburn was tense—resigned, seemingly, to the failings of the script as she saw them, satisfied, perhaps, that it was at least a strong part for Tracy and that the story mirrored the antifascist sentiments of her mother. The battle for control had considerably dimmed her enthusiasm for the project, and it was starting to look less and less likely the film could end on the romantic note that both she and the studio seemed to require.
After a few days of filming, change pages began appearing that would establish Christine’s innocence. Don Stewart’s final contribution to the picture was a “tag” ending wired from New York on September 1 that had O’Malley kissing her and then jumping aboard a train, the camera holding on Christine’s face as it pulled away. Hepburn had played roughly a third of the picture believing her character to be guilty. Now she was faced with playing the rest of it knowing her innocence. She was short with people on the set, quiet and typically unresponsive to the demands of publicity.
Tracy felt comfortable twitting her, something no one else would have dared to do. “Emily,” he grandly told Emily Torchia on the first day of production, “you know, this is an open set.” His own sets were usually closed, but he went out of his way to be welcoming, Kate generally ignoring his attempts at baiting her. “The only person he was hard on,” Torchia remembered, “was the script girl, who had to worry about continuity. Mr. Tracy never wore makeup when I knew him, and he had his hair combed just once a day—in the morning. Now, of course, all day long he ran