Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [287]
3 Treatment for alcoholism was often based on aversion therapies, where the consumption of liquor was accompanied by a powerful emetic. (Some so-called liquor cures even involved the use of leeches.)
4 Stewart, who had been president of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, also appreciated the political message of the film and thought his work on it could be, in the words of his wife, “a contribution to this war against Hitler.”
5 Hepburn’s commitment to the play was actually for sixteen weeks. Allowing for a two-week tryout period, she could have been required to play a maximum of fourteen weeks on Broadway, not twelve.
CHAPTER 19
Not the Guy They See Up There on the Screen
* * *
Within days of receiving Matie Winston’s letter, the one that urged her to “take another flier,” Louise Tracy was presented with the opportunity she craved. “I’ve always had to have a project,” she later said. “Never occurred to me that it might be a big business.” Louise had met somebody who was part of a group of older people who were hard of hearing. “They met every so often, played cards and complained,” she said. “I felt that I wanted to get more deeply interested. I wondered what was going on and what could be done … I met once with them, but I didn’t know enough.”
Through the group she learned of a workshop at the University of Southern California for social workers, teachers, and parents of the hard of hearing. She took Johnny, now eighteen and home from school, and met Dr. Boris Markovin, who was the director of a reading clinic at USC. “He just asked, asked, asked questions,” she said of Dr. Markovin. “He want[ed] to know everything about everything.
“He said, ‘Mrs. Tracy, why don’t you do something for the deaf?’
“I said, ‘What could I do?’
“ ‘Well, of course you [could] do something. Didn’t you ever think of anything you’d like to do?’
“Then I said, ‘I guess if there was anything that I would like to do, it would be to have a little nursery school where children and their mothers could learn together.’
“ ‘Do it!’ he said.”
Dr. Markovin asked her to give a talk at the workshop banquet. When Louise wondered what she’d say, he told her just to tell them what she had told him. “You tell them this story,” he said, and she said that she would try.
Putting aside The Story of John, Louise worked up a speech and read it to Spence, who was preparing to start Keeper of the Flame. He thought it was great. “It was just about John and the difficulty of being deaf,” she said. “I know I was scared stiff.” She talked about coping with her son’s deafness, her struggle to find help, her realization that a deaf child could be taught. State schools for the deaf didn’t admit children until the age of six; who was supposed to teach them before six? “Maybe a dozen of us had heard about this program and Dr. Markovin had rounded them up. [We] had our punch and talked about the possibility of doing something. These were mostly mothers of young children. That was quite a step forward because somebody had to take the lead, and Dr. Markovin kept pushing me. He said, ‘Can’t we all meet someplace? Can’t we meet at your house?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ll set a date …’ ”
The meeting took place on July 18, 1942, when fifty mothers crowded into the modest Tracy ranch house on White Oak. Louise called the meeting to order and introduced a speaker from the California Society of Crippled Children, who told the mothers that it was up to the parents of a handicapped child to see that things were done for him or her. Most parents, he said, wanted to pass their cares on to somebody else. An organization of parents could accomplish more than a single person. A Mrs. Richard Simon of San Francisco sent a plan for the formation of such an organization, its goals centering on prevention, education, rehabilitation, and employment.